HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS PARIS REBORN Boulevard St. Denis. Procession after procession of recruits passed through the boulevards PARIS REBORN A STUDY IN CIVIC PSYCHOLOGY BY HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS AUTHOR OF "THE NEW MAP OF EUROPE," "THE FOUNDA- TION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE," ETC. ILLUSTRATIONS BY LESTER G. HORNBY NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1915 Copyright, 1915, by THE CENTURY Co. Published, October, 1915 TO ALL WHO REMAINED IN PARIS DURING THE TRYING DAYS OF AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER, 1914, AND THUS SHOWED THEIR WILLINGNESS TO SHARE THE DISCOMFORTS AND DANGERS OF THEIR DEFENDERS, AND REFLECTED THE INTREPID SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH AND BRITISH ARMIES BETWEEN PARIS AND THE ENEMY 2500887 It is through the kindness of Mr. Rodman Wanamaker that I am allowed to republish staff correspondence to the Philadelphia Even- ing Telegraph. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTEK PAGE I HURRYING HOME FROM FINISTERE .... 3 II PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE . . 15 III THE CONFLAGRATION IS INEVITABLE ... 30 IV THE DAY OF THE BELGIAN ULTIMATUM ... 42 V REQUISITIONING 54 VI LIEGE HOLDS FIRM 64 VII WE HEAR THE GOOD NEWS FROM ALSACE . . 70 VIII BLIND, BUT THEY KNEW IT NOT 83 IX THOSE THEY LEFT BEHIND THEM 88 X AUGUST NIGHTS 93 XI ANONYMITY AND INDEMNITY IIO XII FALSE HOPES Il8 XIII THE FOREIGN VOLUNTEERS I25 XIV PARIS PRAYS 133 XV THE FIRST DISILLUSIONMENT I36 XVI SILENCE: FOR THE CENSOR IS AT WORK . . . I4I XVII THE AFRICAN TROOPS PASS THROUGH . . . I52 XVIII THE TAUBEN BRING US NEWS !58 XIX THE GOVERNMENT LEAVES US ify XX THE FROUSSARDS I77 XXI PARIS PREPARES TO RECEIVE THE GERMANS . I94 XXII WAITING 208 XXIII AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE . . . . 2i8 XXIV PARIS AT NOTRE DAME 227 XXV THE CAFE STRATEGISTS 233 XXVI THE DESECRATION OF REIMS 239 XXVII "ON DIT" 249 XXVIII A CITY SUFFERING 259 XXIX THE REFUGEES 282 XXX SPIES 293 XXXI THE NEW KULTURKAMPF 300 XXXII AND THEN THE HANDELSKAMPF 306 XXXIII RED TAPE 3II XXXIV SHARING THE GLORY 322 CONTENTS CHAPTEB PAGE XXXV THE CENSORSHIP AGAIN 328 XXXVI THE EIFFEL TOWER 33! XXXVII RED CROSS AND RECLAME 340 XXXVIII THE TAUBEN RETURN 346 XXXIX WINTER CLOTHING FOR THE PIOU-PIOUS . . .356 XL THE BOY SCOUTS 362 XLI JUSQU'AU BOUT 368 XLII VERS LA GLOIRE! 37! XLIII RED CROSS AND RED TAPE 377 XLIV THE FROUSSARDS COME HOME 382 XLV THE CHRISTMAS MIDNIGHT MASS AT SAINT SULPICE 389 ILLUSTRATIONS Boulevard St. Denis. Procession after procession of recruits passed through the boulevards Frontispiece Requisitioning automobiles in the Esplanade des Invalides . . 57 August Nights. In the Champs-Elysees 95 The Seine at Notre Dame 105 At a kiosk on the Grande Boulevard. Buying the latest com- munique 143 In the Garden of the Tuileries. A Taube had paid its usual six o'clock visit 161 When the aeroplanes had certainly disappeared, the people went back to their work 175 The Place Vendome from the Rue de la Paix. You could not get a cab. All were bound for railroad stations . . . 185 At the fortifications. A tangle of barbed wire 203 Reims Cathedral 245 The markets are full of food-stuffs 263 The Quai aux Fleurs. As the tide of battle rolls away from Paris, this great city resumes its usual life 273 In the Latin Quarter. En queue at a soup cantine . . . 287 Eiffel Tower. The voice of France 337 In the Garden of Luxembourg. The usual happy, care-free Sunday afternoon crowd 351 In the quarter of the Pantheon 373 PARIS REBORN PARIS REBORN HURRYING HOME FROM FINISTERE Sain t-Jean-du-Doigt, July thirtieth, 1914. NO more interesting visitor has dropped in upon us at "Ty Coz" than the eminent American journalist who came for tea this afternoon. Every line in his alert face, the pose of his head, the flash of his eye, marked the man who had mounted the rungs of the Park Row ladder by the ability of keeping continually on the qui vive. He was posi- tive, like all men of his type, and confident in the infallibility of his sixth sense. Conversation turned upon the anxious weeks since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo. Helen and I were full of apprehension. The immediate future appalled us. Were we never to get away from the trail of blood we had been following ever since those fateful days of April, 1909, when we saw the hopes of a regenerated 3 PARIS REBORN Turkey disappear in the horror of the Armenian massacres at Adana*? Was there before us another chapter — this time on a much larger scale — of agony and misery through the clash of nations'? We could not help unburdening our hearts to the guest who sat calmly sipping his tea. The American journalist would have none of our presentiment. "I have been waiting," said he, "twenty-five years for your European war. Many a time it has seemed as imminent as this. But it will not come! Europe cannot afford a war. There is to-day such a close interrelationship between big business in the capitals of Europe that an actual conflict is beyond the realm of possibility. The diplomats will fume and fuss. But they know bet- ter than to plunge their countries into a colossal struggle that will ruin Europe and set back civiliza- tion." After our friend had gone, I looked at my wife. "What do you think now*?" I asked her. "I think that I am going to take the first train to- morrow morning to Morlaix to get some money," she answered, "and that the summer at the seashore for which you have been waiting and dreaming for six years is going to end rather suddenly." July thirty-first. Helen was as good as her word. At daybreak 4 HURRYING HOME FROM FINISTERE she was off to the nearest town where there are branches of the Paris banks. To persuade myself that I was not at all apprehensive, and that all this war talk was nonsense, I spent the morning writing about the influence of Walt Whitman upon the younger contemporary French poets. How refresh- ing it is to be able to close your mind to rumors and ephemeral excitement! The Bard of Camden is a welcome refuge in times like these. There is no more tiring question, even when you ask it of yourself, than, "What do you think is going to hap- pen?' The afternoon was glorious. Among the summer people none was caring about how Servia answered the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary, or what the Ger- man ambassador at St. Petersburg was saying. In the little shop, the Paris newspapers lay on the counter. They had just arrived from Plougasnou. But the people from the hotel across the road were not crowding around, eager for the latest word. I took the children in the donkey-cart to meet the train from Morlaix. A laughing group of young people, French and English, were just leaving the hotel with bathing-suits and a tea-basket. As we crossed the brook, a voice hailed me from the bushes. I persuaded the donkey to stop. Looking down, I saw a member of the London Stock Ex- change busily painting a landscape. 5 PARIS REBORN " Didn't you go back to England yesterday1?" I asked in surprise. "Why1?" he answered, and paused to light a ciga- rette. The shrill whistle of the train on the hill warned me to hurry. I was glad, for it is unpleasant to be taken as an alarmist. Perhaps I was a fool. The future is always uncertain. It is just when you are surest that you make the biggest mistakes. I can imagine no more disheartening situation than that of a pupil in the old Hebrew school of Prophets — unless it be going out to practise the profession after graduating. As she alighted from the train, Helen said to me, "War is inevitable. You will have to work hard and fast, if you want to finish your History of the Ottoman Empire while there is still an Ottoman Em- pire. The crash is coming." She had got her money just twenty minutes be- fore word arrived by telegraph to cash no more checks on Paris. Gresham's law was at work in Morlaix. Over night money had disappeared. No one would change a bank-note. The earth seemed to have swal- lowed up all the gold and silver. Business was com- pletely stopped until small paper money could arrive from Paris. The babies caught the drift of our conversation. Christine, who is scarcely more than five, looked up 6 HURRYING HOME FROM FINISTERE and said, 'There are n't going to be any more sol- diers hurting each other, are there*?" When we were driving into the village, an Ameri- can woman stopped us. "Do give me your advice," she said. "I have places reserved for New York next week on the Vaterland for Thursday and the 'France for Satur- day. Which do you think I had better take*?" "You have a more important question than that before you," I answered. "Have you got any money*?" "Money4? What do you mean*? I have my let- ter of credit, and travelers' checks besides." It was the first time that it had ever been sug- gested to this woman that she might lack money. I could not explain to her that bankable paper was for the time being no good to her. She smiled incredu- lously. We left her standing in the middle of the road. She looked offended, and her eyes echoed what her lips had kept insisting, "I can always get all the money I want." * On the Brest-Paris Express, Saturday noon, August -first. We reached Morlaix just in time for a hurried 1 1 learned later that this woman rode across France to Paris in a motor car the following week. When she arrived at the Astoria Hotel on the Champs-Elysees, where her trunks were awaiting her, she had two francs in her pocket. She found the hotel shut, 7 PARIS REBORN bite at the hotel. Helen came over to the station to see me off. After I had registered my baggage, we entered the waiting-room. A guard of soldiers had stacked their arms in the center of the room. "Is it mobilization4?" I asked the corporal. "Not yet," he responded. "We were sent here just an hour ago. Detachments have also been sta- tioned at each end of the bridge across the valley." So I am off for Paris. It does not seem real, this sudden ending of my vacation in midsummer. I re- member vividly the day, scarcely more than a year ago, I spent on board the Austrian battleship Ra- detzky^ in the harbor of Gravosa. After lunch in the wardroom, the Austrian officers spoke freely to me about what was ahead of their government if Servia was successful in the Second Balkan War, just entered upon two days before against Bulgaria. When I got back to the hotel that night, I found a telegram asking me to leave immediately for Bel- grade to follow the Servian operations. I did not go. For there was a baby ten weeks old in Paris, and her father had not yet seen her. A year ago I went away from war to Paris to my family. To- day I am going away from my family to Paris to war. The only other occupants of the compartment are and was greeted with the news that the proprietor had been put in jail as a German spy. 8 HURRYING HOME FROM FINISTERE a young Breton couple who have been married three weeks. He has a position in Paris, and is taking her for the first time away from her home to the Great City. They tell me about the apartment that he has fitted up for her, and ask me if I know the quarter in which they are to live. But, since they left St. Pol-de-Leon this morning, the first thought of disaster has crept into their minds. He will be called out on the second day, if there is a mobilization. They ask me the old question, "Do you think there will be war*?" The answer they want is a negative. What am I to say1? Rennet, 2 p. m. Coming into the station, we passed barracks and an artillery park. The wheels were off the gun car- riages, and men were greasing the hubs. Officers were inspecting horses. The bride has asked me to see if I can buy a news- paper. She does not want her husband to leave her. I try to cheer her by pointing out that the station employees are not wearing the brassard? which is the first sure sign of mobilization on the railway. Let us have hope as long as possible. Vitre, 4.15 p. m. Here the news has reached us. As our train en- tered the station, the call for a general mobilization 1 Arm-band. \ PARIS REBORN was being posted. I do not dare to leave my place to read the proclamation. I know well that I should never get a seat on this train again. The crowds on the platform are enormous. Some men entering the compartment say they have been waiting at the sta- tion since morning for the word to come. At the very moment given in their instructions, they want to be at their recruiting stations. There is exulta- tion on their faces. They seem glad to go. The moment for which they have been living ever since they were born has come. The feeling communi- cates itself to me. But I look across to my companions, who had been anticipating this mobilization call, not as a thing of joy, but as the death knell. There will be no honey- moon in the little nest that he has prepared for his bride. He must go within forty-eight hours. Her head is on his shoulder. The slender hand with fingers clasped tightly round his wrist shows what she is passing through. Saturday, midnight. I have reached this little hotel near the Gare du Montparnasse, and am thankful to have found a room. From Vitre to Paris the train was no longer the ordinary Paris-Brest express. It was transformed into a military train, jammed full of men answering 10 HURRYING HOME FROM FINISTERE the call to arms. At every station, we were besieged by crowds of reservists, until there was no more room and the engine could draw no more extra carriages. Then we crept slowly towards Paris, bearing our offering of human lives. One could feel, mingled with the effervescence, the excitement, the joy of ap- proaching conflict, an undertone of anguish and sor- row, strikingly typified in that white-faced bride who in the course of the day's journey had seen her goal of happiness changed to an imprisonment of weary waiting in a strange city. An hour ago we reached the Gare du Montpar- nasse. Fete-day crowds in a Paris railway station are worse than a Bank Holiday crowd trying to get out of London. But nothing in my experience has approached the Gare du Montparnasse as I found it this evening. Every one, including officials, seemed to be moving in some direction without knowing where or why he was walking. Every one was talk- ing to every one else about the subject which made the trial of Madame Caillaux seem a hundred years in the past. I had foolishly registered my baggage at Mor- laix. When I went into the baggage-room, I soon saw the hopelessness of waiting. "If you want your baggage," said the sole official I could buttonhole, "the only way you '11 get it is to go out on the plat- form and find it yourself." I took a look at the plat- 11 PARIS REBORN form. The vans had been emptied pell-mell. Mountains of trunks and bags loomed up before me. I should have needed a ladder or a crowbar — prob- ably both. So I decided to allow the hotel porter to wrestle with the problem to-morrow. The Salle des Pas Perdus was almost empty. When I had gone down the outer stairway, and passed into the Place de Rennes, I caught my first glimpse of Paris in wartime. The great square was black with people. Soldiers had cleared the terrace in front of the station. The entrances were guarded. A host of men, each with his womenfolk around him, formed a long line, waiting to enter. Paris was already responding to the call. Women were already rising to the occasion. Enthusiasm, confusion, and lamentation are the three words which best describe what I saw. But enthusiasm predom- inated. On the wall, beside the exit door, my eye caught the huge poster whose words I had been burning to read ever since leaving Vitre. ARMY OF LAND AND ARMY OF SEA ORDER OF GENERAL MOBILIZATION By decree of the President of the Republic, the mobilization of the armies of land and sea is ordered, as well as the requisition of animals, 12 HURRYING HOME FROM FINISTERE carriages and harness necessary to the supplying of these armies. THE FIRST DAY OF THE MOBILIZATION IS Sunday, August 2, 1914. Every Frenchman, subject to military obliga- tions, must, under penalty of being punished with all the rigor of the laws, obey the prescriptions of his book of mobilization. Subject to this order are ALL MEN not at present under the flag. The civil and military Authorities are respon- sible for the execution of this decree. THE MINISTER OF WAR. THE MINISTER OF THE NAVY The date was inserted with a rubber stamp. These posters had long been printed. In every com- mune in France, in Corsica, in Algeria, and in the distant colonies, in every railway station, in every post-office, they had been tucked away for years, waiting for this moment that was bound to come. A man who had arrived on my train crowded up beside me. He read the poster through from begin- ning to end. I watched him curiously. His only comment was the brief but expressive phrase, un- translatable, "Ca y estT He then took from his pocket the little "book of mobilization" which every Frenchman carries, and looked to see what he was to do, and where he was to go. This man typified 13 PARIS REBORN all France on the evening of August first. If France is not ready, it will be munitions and not soldiers that are lacking. Another small poster announced that the military authorities had taken over the railways, and that passenger services were suspended. I had come through from Finistere on the last train. As I crossed the Place de Rennes to find a hotel, my way was barred at every step by family groups. Women and children, old and young, were clinging desperately to those who were waiting to enter the station on their way to suffering and death. I do not say to glory, for I have witnessed these scenes at the old Sirkedji station in Constantinople, at Sofia, at Salonika, at Athens and at Cettinje, and I have lived through their aftermath. War is the placing of human affections upon the altar. The sacrifice acceptable in the sight of Mars is the broken woman turning homeward when the man has gone. II PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE Sunday ', midnight, August second. A MAN ought to be disgusted with himself for not waking until nine o'clock on the most memorable day of modern history. It was some minutes before I could adjust myself to where I was, and why I was there. The events of the journey from Finistere, more than the journey itself, had proved a severe drain on nervous eneugy. But when I looked at the clock, I was up with a start. I had no baggage, so my toilet was quickly accomplished. As I stepped out of the elevator, a woman spoke to me. "Pardon me," she asked, "but are you an Ameri- can1?" "I certainly am," I answered. "How are you planning to get out of Paris'? The clerk at the desk seems too busy to tell me more than that trains are not running, and the hall porter stupidly shrugs his shoulders, and pretends not to understand English. I must get to London or some- where. They say the Germans are coming, and that we shall be besieged." 15 PARIS REBORN "How am I planning to get out? Why, I just got in with difficulty last night." Perhaps it was rude not to satisfy the astonished question in her eyes, but I was thinking of other things. I hurried into the reading-room. There was the Matin, with the headline across the front page, GERMANY DECLARES WAR ON RUSSIA The Rubicon is crossed. A lea jacta estl All Europe will be soon in arms. I can see only one thing with certainty. It was foreshadowed on a Sunday morning in November, two years ago, when I stood on the hill behind my home in Constantinople and heard the Bulgarian cannon thundering at Tcha- taldja. It is inevitable now. The Crescent will wane no more, for there will be no more Crescent to wane. The new map of Europe, drawn in accord- ance with the decisions of this gigantic struggle, will have no place for Turkey. Across the street from the open door of the hotel I saw a debit, where one finds coffee for two sous, and delicious croissants or petits pains for a sou. I had in my pocket just fifty centimes (ten cents), so I was saved from enduring lukewarm cafe • au lait served by a supercilious waiter who would lift his eyebrows if you asked for more than one roll and more than a quarter-teaspoonful of butter. You do not know 16 PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE the life of Paris until you have learned to lean your elbows on the zinc counter of a debit, and to order a two sou cup of coffee without allowing the bar- tender to work off on you with it a petit verre of ex- pensive brandy. It was a woman with swollen eyes, whose tears were still falling, that served me. She explained that one boy was doing his military service at Belfort, and the other had just left half an hour ago for Toul. "Tell me," she said, "is there any hope that it will not be war? If Austria attacks Servia, and Russia attacks Austria, why should that mean that France must attack Germany and my boys go to be killed"? Servia is nothing but a name to me. And yet I must suffer this. Tell me, is such a thing possible? Is it really war for us because Germany has declared war on Russia1?" There was nothing I could say. What explana- tion would have satisfied that mother's heart of the reasonableness of her sacrifice"? At that moment, a newsboy came along the street, calling "La Patrie! La Patrie!" This was an evening newspaper, and here it was not yet ten in the morning. I went to the door, and bought a copy. My answer was in the headline. A German cavalry patrol had crossed the border at Joncherey, and killed the corporal commanding 1? / PARIS REBORN the post. Near Longwy, another violation of French territory is reported. Across the zinc, I read the news to the mother in tears. Her expression changed. The face grew hard. A feverish hand grasped my wrist. "Monsieur," she said, "I am ashamed of my weakness. Ever since I was a little girl I have known that it would be my duty, my priv- ilege indeed, to bear sons to save France from the Germans. I am glad that I have two !" -At the telegraph window in the post-office, I found a notice stating that telegrams must bear no code ad- dress and no code words, and that they are accepted only after having been vised at police headquarters. This censorship! How often I have wrestled with it, and enjoyed with keen zest the game of matching wits with the clever stupidity and the obstinacy of officialdom. But my experience heretofore had al- ways been with the southern temperament, with Spaniards, with Italians, Greeks and Turks. I had never failed to find some loophole. It took me less than two hours to-day to realize that here was a dif- ferent proposition. Rien a dis cuter, Monsieur! There will be no "indiscretions" in this war. Only hopeless banalities will go out over the wires. News — as we understand that word in America — is taboo. I confess that my greatest disappointment was not that I am, for the moment, at least, relieved of the feverish tension of censors and cables, but that I 18 PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE could not use the excuse of a cable for getting a hun- dred franc note changed. I had only two copper sous. The bank-notes in my pocket were worth ab- solutely nothing. At every cafe, an intentionally huge sign on the terrace invites you to refrain from eating and drinking unless you are able to give the exact change. It was either go back to the hotel, where I would not have to pay cash, or go hungry. I had a vision of the hotel corridor crowded with ex- cited tourists. "Do you mind telling me just in a few words what all this war is about1?" "Will the American Express Company cash their checks'? What shall I do if I can get no money?" "Do you think that Cook's will be open to-morrow?" There is a limit to what one is willing to do — even for a meal. Who would be in town on a Sunday in midsum- mer'? It was then that I got a happy inspiration. The Lawyer, of course ! Down the Boulevard Ras- pail I hurried; for it was high noon, and with the happy inspiration came the fearful thought that he might already have gone out. It was not only that he would stake me to lunch. The Lawyer's heart is matched by his brain. Neither could be bigger. No American knows Europe better. No American loves France more passionately. With whom could I spend a more illuminating afternoon on the first day of the mobilization? 19 PARIS REBORN I found the Lawyer just returning from a spin on his bicycle in the Bois de Boulogne. No war could change his habits. I buried myself in the Bergson lying open on his study-table while he took his shower. We lunched at a cafe opposite the "Boul Mich" entrance of the Luxembourg. The fountain of Marie de Medici was splashing away as usual. The ordinary Sunday crowds were passing through the gates into the garden. But there were no autobusses, and tramways were few. After lunch we sat on the terrace of the Cafe d'Harcourt for our coffee. At the Lycee Saint- Louis across the street, the young men mobilized for the engineer service were being received. A number in uniform stood around the door, and newcomers were greeted with cheers. Some of them were hav- ing a farewell glass with the Fifis and Mimis at tables around us. There was no sadness, no feel- ing of depression. The students were full of en- thusiasm. To youth war is an adventure, and those who go are "lucky dogs." We could see the envious eyes of the too young, looking at the uni- forms of the old enough. As for the Fifis and Mimis, a sudden parting, a col- lapse of the house of cards, is not a new experience born of the war. It is part of the life of the Quar- ter. If they were not willing "to play the game" 20 PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE with a stiff upper lip, they would not be there. They were playing it, all right, this afternoon. When we reached the Rue Soufflot, on our way back to the Luxembourg to see if by any chance there would be music, association made me think of the Artist. Could he possibly have gotten back this soon from the little town near Douarnenez, away at the end of Finistere, where I had left him ten days ago? Had he seen the storm coming1? We climbed up behind the Pantheon to the Rue Descartes. No, the concierge had heard nothing from the Artist, but would see that he got my message immediately upon his return. I left as my address the hotel where I was stopping for the moment. For I felt sure that he would get back to Paris somehow. Trust the Artist ! His head is as clever as his hand, and that is saying a good deal. A quiet, peaceful afternoon we spent, the Lawyer and I, near the large basin by the Palais du Senat. The Luxembourg is never prettier than in midsum- mer with its riot of color around the Palais and in the parterre. The weather was glorious. The merry ring of children's laughter and the beauty of God in the flowers seemed to give the lie to the news the camelots were crying on the boulevard. It seemed as if we had awakened from an ugly and re- pellent dream into the reality of life. Why does not the joy of living make impossible the lust of killing? 21 PARIS REBORN Why does not the influence of creation master the madness of destruction? The spell was soon broken. There were too many women passing us who revealed their overwhelming thought by the way they held the arm of their es- corts. Whether it was a mother with her big boy, a wife with her husband, a girl with her lover, the clutch was the same. Clutch — no other word de- scribes it. There was no music. We wanted none. It would have been a mockery. When Paris is in agony, she continues to smile. But she does not sing. Music would only help the flow of tears, and tears unnerve. And yet, there was no depression. One felt in the atmosphere rather that grim, triumphant exultation of suffering where the cry of the lost soul is drowned by the cry of the redeemed, where the joy of the sacri- fice transcends the pain of it. There kept running through my head the trio in the fifth act of Faust. Gounod must have lived through the first day of a mobilization. The Lawyer, from his vast storehouse of know- ledge, was calling forth the reasons why. His face was illumined as he spoke of the redemption of Al- sace and Lorraine, and that led him — with some fal- tering— to the subject nearest and dearest. When he presented the brief for Poland, and suggested the possible effects of the war, he seemed to be answering 22 PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE the mute question of the passers-by, which had com- municated itself to me. Only the surgeon's knife can cure the disease. Women of France, the sacri- fice will not be in vain. Life is given for others. Else the world would have no ideals. The Lawyer left me at sunset. He would not go across to the grands boulevards, not he. On a night like this? I felt that I had to excuse my youthful temerity and willingness to mingle with crowds on the ground of professional duty. "I must see what is going on," I said. "Slippers and dressing-gown and Bergson for me," he replied. I had the good fortune to run into one of my old students from Constantinople, who had come to Paris for law, but was now thinking of enlisting. He re- sponded with alacrity to the suggestion of the Boule- vards. We went down into the subway and came to light again at the Gare de 1'Est. On this first evening of the mobilization, the Gare de 1'Est was the heart of France. The reservists were leaving from all the stations to report at their respective garrison towns. But from the Gare de 1'Est regiment after regiment of soldiers actually under the flags, the men of the "first line" who are called upon to ward off the first brusk attacks of the giant while France is mobilizing behind the ram- part of their bodies, were being hurried off. To 23 PARIS REBORN them the battlefield was something of to-night, of to-morrow, and not of weeks ahead, when the diplo- mats may have the questions at issue settled out of court. So here we saw the soldiers who were going straight to the line of fire. Signs at the outer gates, "Militaries pour Nancy" and "Militaries pour Belfort," made one think of unredeemed Metz and Strasbourg beyond. The crowd was dense and noisy. It was hard for the sol- diers who arrived singly to work their way through to the gate. There was much grasping of hands, some embracing, and a continuous refrain of au revoir, bonne chance, and bon courage. So much liquor was being drunk that the atmosphere was of hilarity rather than of confidence. The crowd around the gates was rather hoodlum than typically Parisian. As we withdrew, wild yells and the crash of falling glass came from a big cafe directly opposite the station. It was all over when we got there. Waiters had tried to overcharge some soldiers or reservists. Grabbing chairs for weapons, they cleaned out the cafe, and smashed the tables and every bit of glass in the place. To give good measure, the chairs were thrown through the windows of the hotel on the first and second stories. I have never seen such complete destruction in 24 PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE so short a time. When the police arrived, there was nothing to do. The crowd approved. As we walked down the Boulevard de Strasbourg towards the grands boulevards, every cafe was ablaze with light, and tables overflowed into the street. The orchestras were playing the Marseillaise, the Eambre et Meuse and the Russian and British na- tional hymns. Nothing else would go. The same four airs were demanded over and over again. Those standing in the street joined in the choruses of the songs with as much zest as if they also were drinking heavily. The evening was grow- ing older, and the excitement increasing with every hour. My companion and I managed to get a table, where we soon found ourselves involuntary recipients of an enthusiastic ovation. He, a Spanish Jew from Turkey, and I, an American to the cut of my trou- sers, were somehow taken by the crowd for English- men. It would not have done to protest. For then we should have been German spies ! We had to see it through by standing on our chairs and leading the mob in "God save the King," of which we, no more than they, knew the words. We came out strong on the last line of each verse. Up to the last line, I sang "My country, 'tis of thee." The Constanti- nopolitan just kept his lips moving. We were com- pelled to shake hands with one and all of the hun- 25 PARIS REBORN dreds who passed in line before us, and to promise that the British would not fail France. When finally we managed to sit down again, I had decided I would never run for the Presidency of the United States. My arm is so limp that I can hardly write. My mind would be limp also if I had consumed the pledges of friendship with which our table was cov- ered. Many of our numerous friends had ordered up drinks for us. The waiter stopped bringing them only when he had no place to put them. What has happened since we escaped from that cafe is a dream. Fourteen years ago I had the privi- lege of living through Mafeking night in London. It was a night that brought a new word into the Eng- lish language. This evening has equaled Mafeking night in enthusiasm — no, that is not the word I want — in delirium. From the Gare de 1'Est to the Madeleine, proces- sion after procession passed through the Boulevards, carrying flags and banners. As most of the young men of the nation are leaving to-day or to-morrow, the French manifestants were mostly boys. Among the most enthusiastic that I saw were those whose banner declared that they were "The Jews of France in Arms for the Motherland." 1 The majority of 1 1 must explain my translation of "Patrie." I had it correctly "Fatherland," in the MS., but my wife crossed it out and sub- stituted "Motherland." She says that "Fatherland" smacks too 26 PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE the paraders were volunteers of various nations, who, according to their banners at least, were offering their services to France. Among the groups I j otted down : "Rumania rallies to the Mother of the Latin races" ; "Italy, whose freedom was purchased by French blood"; "Spain, the loving sister of France" ; "British volunteers for France" ; "The Greeks who love France" ; "Belgium looks to France"; "Luxembourg will never be German" ; "The Slavic World at France's side"; "Scandinavians of Paris"; "South American lives for the Mother of South American culture." The greatest cheers, mixed with frenzied sobs, greeted the long line of those who claimed to be "Alsatians bound for home." _ How one gets to the very depth of French feeling whenever Alsace and Lorraine are mentioned ! Mob spirit, of which we had seen the beginning at the Gare de 1'Est, soon got the upper hand. Al- most next door to the cafe where we had our ova- tion was a Paris Pschorrbrauhaus. It was rumored — falsely perhaps — that the orchestra had got tired of much of beer and sausages, and spoils the sentiment of my narra- tive! 2? PARIS REBORN playing the Marseillaise. In five minutes there was nothing left of the cafe but splintered glass and wood. A merry and peaceable crowd was changing into a mpb bent upon destruction. A few roughnecks began the sack of cafes whose proprietors had German names, or whose signs told that they sold German beer. As biere de Munich is a favorite beverage with Parisians, this meant really every cafe. Wise men, who saw the storm coming, closed hastily. We got into the maelstrom as it swept down the grands boulevards towards the Place de 1'Opera. The dives of Paris had poured out their product — the same type as in all great cities. Patriotism was seized upon as the excuse for loot and destruction. It is astonishing how contamination spreads. Re- spectable men and boys — even respectable women — caught the mob spirit. Robbed of their objective by the closing of the cafes, the mob began to break into shops supposed to be German or Austrian. It needed only the un- supported affirmation of some irresponsible person to start an attack. From the very beginning, the police were powerless to protect Appenrodt's and the Cristallerie de Karlsbad on the Boulevard des Ital- iens. We saw one stone fired, then another, and after that there was no stopping the mob. Mounted cavalry appeared. It was too late. They were un- 28 PARIS ANSWERS THE CALL TO MOBILIZE willing to ride down the crowd or fire into it. No gentler measure would have sufficed. The city of Paris will have a large bill of damages to pay when this night's accounts are settled. It is a poor way for Paris to enter into the life- and-death struggle. I should be anxious — and dis- gusted— had I not seen mobs before, and did I not know that the grands boulevards could no more typify the real Paris in war than in peace. A few thousands, drawn into a demonstration of which they will be heartily ashamed to-morrow, are looting and destroying. A few thousands are drinking them- selves into a state of irresponsibility. But two mil- lions in this city to-night are soberly resigning them- selves to the sacrifice. Those who are called are pre- paring to go out to fight and die. Those who are not called will remain to work and keep the de- fenders in the field. The real Paris is not the mob with stones and sticks, but the woman who gave me my morning cof- fee, the students at the cafe on the "Boul Mich," the Lawyer with his illumined face, the women clutch- ing the arms of their menfolk in the Luxembourg. Because I see the power of victory in Paris answering the call to mobilize, my heart thrills with the cer- tainty of realization when I think of that one banner standing out among those of the volunteers, "Alsatians bound for home" ! 29 Ill THE CONFLAGRATION IS INEVITABLE August third. THIS morning I left my hotel with two "first things" in my head : money and a typewriter. Both were intimately connected with the war, how- ever, and with each other. It was not that I antici- pated much difficulty in getting either, but that I needed both badly. When I got over to the region of the Opera, I found that I had been taking too much for granted. I tried first for money. At the Credit Lyonnais there was a line greater than one would find in New York for the dollar seats on a Caruso night. I felt pleased with myself that my eggs were not all in one basket. I had an account in an American bank. I turned my steps in the direction of the Boulevard Haussmann, quickly mapping out my time. Half an hour for the bank, half an hour for renting a type- writer, half an hour to get back to my hotel in a cab with the machine, and by one o'clock I would have my letter ready to mail. Then after lunch I could cast around and see who was in town. 30 THE CONFLAGRATION IS INEVITABLE For the first time in his life, Frangois, the most urbane elevator man in the world, was not smiling. I could hardly believe eyes and ears when he an- swered my usual salutation with a grunt, and shoved me into the lift with half a dozen others. But when I stepped out into the corridor between the American clients' guichets and the post-office desk where you get your mail, I forgave Francois. No, more than that. I wondered that he had the will left to so much as grunt, after having carried that unman- nerly mob upstairs. I made my way through the reading-room, sized up the situation, decided that the typewriter was more pressing than money, and made a dive back for the elevator. In the course of my dive I met a per- sistent obstacle, which refused to yield to silent per- suasion or to be moved by a gentle "I beg your par- don." "Say," remonstrated the obstacle. "This is Nine- teen-Fourteen and not Noughty-One. What mental aberration has led you to think you have turned the hands of the clock back fifteen years, that my direc- tion is the goal towards which you are trying to push the pigskin, and that your fifteen-stone of fat is worth the ten-stone of muscle you wielded in the good old days'?" I looked up with joy. The hands-across-the-sea mixture of his metaphor was as sure an indication to 31 PARIS REBORN me as his drawl. "Why, it is the Sculptor!" I cried joyously. "No other person," he answered. "Where is the Artist*? Seeing one bad egg, you understand, makes me think of — " "The good one1?" I interrupted. It was impossible to talk in that hubbub of : PLAINTIVE QUERY: "Why can I have only five hundred francs'? I carry a large balance with you." PLEASANT ANSWER: "It is the new law passed to-day, Madame, the moratorium. You can draw two hundred and fifty francs and five per cent, of your balance." GRUFF DEMAND (masculine "self-made" voice, of course) : "Gi' me these in gold." PLEASANT ANSWER: "I am sorry, sir, but these are not our travelers' checks, nor are they of our cor- respondents. Anyway, we would have no gold to give for our own checks to-day." SHRILL, HYSTERICAL CRY: "And is my letter of credit any good now*?" PLEASANT ANSWER: "Yes, Madame, we can give you the equivalent of twenty-five pounds sterling." CONTINUANCE OF SAME CRY : "But I have to buy some gowns." CONTINUANCE OF SAME PLEASANT ANSWER: "I am sorry, Madame, but we can give no more than the equivalent of twenty-five pounds to-day." 32 THE CONFLAGRATION IS INEVITABLE And so forth; and so forth; AND so FORTH ! Frangois took us downstairs. When we got out into the open air, the Sculptor said : "Think I '11 do a golden calf for the Pan-Ameri- can, and call it: Paris, August third, 1914. No use bothering my brain to hunt subjects; they always come to you — thrust upon you." The Sculptor was not interested in my quest for a typewriter. We parted with the understanding that each would keep an eye open for the Artist and that we should meet in the evening to dine at Marie's. On the Boulevard des Italiens I found all the evi- dences of "the morning after." The places that had been wrecked were boarded up. Policemen in double rows mounted guard at the Cafe Viennois and other suspected places. Most of the shops had closed, and bore the sign Mai son Franfaise: fermee pour cause de mobilization (French establishment: closed for the mobilization). As a great many of the boulevard shopkeepers have names which are not typ- ically French, the assertion Mais on Frangaise and the ostentatious display of the French flag was as ludi- crous as if Lower Broadway were decked in green for St. Patrick's Day. Mr. Rosenbaum or Mr. Bern- stein may be French or Irish, but there is at least a reasonable doubt! In many windows, certificates of French origin, stamped by the Prefecture of Po- lice, were displayed, or, in default of these, Russian, 33 PARIS REBORN British, Italian and Belgian passports. For more than one fair dame, accustomed to dress as jeune fille and hide the gray by henna, this was a public con- fession of age. But was not that better than the risk of having plate glass broken and shop looted*? Hunting for a typewriter on the Boulevards, in the Rue le Peletier and the Rue Richelieu, afforded curious revelations concerning the origin of shop- keepers and their goods. I remember as a boy won- dering why in the New York markets choice fowls were always labeled "Philadelphia poultry," and in the Philadelphia markets "New York poultry." Is it true even of the denizens of the barnyard that they are without honor in their own country"? Why do we always attach a greater value to the thing that comes from some other place than that in which we live*? Why is "imported" the magic word that sells'? To-day in Paris Vienna bakers, British and American tailors, Italian restaurant keepers are all loyal Frenchmen leaving for the battle line. Eng- lish home-spun comes from Lille, Austrian pottery from Limoges, eau-de-Cologne from Soissons, Frank- furter sausages from Tours, sauerkraut from Nancy and biere de Munich from the suburbs of Paris. Only sewing machines and typewriters are not home made. But this brings me back to my quest. That there should have been a paralysis in the business life of French firms through the crisis in the 34 THE CONFLAGRATION IS INEVITABLE money market and through the calling out of their managers for an indefinite period of war service is wholly understandable. But I do not know why a number of American typewriter firms had closed shop, and why in the one great concern which I found open the American manager, a true New Yorker, was wholly "up in the air." To hear him talk, one would believe that the end of the world had come and that what the morrow would bring forth no man knew. I tried to reason with him, for I wanted a typewriter badly. He would not rent one. He would not accept a deposit, as a guarantee of my good faith. Typewriters there were galore around him, but not one would be allowed to leave the prem- ises unless I paid him seven hundred francs in cash. When I told him that I already had one of his type- writers, bought only a few months before, at my country home and another machine at Havre and that I did not care to purchase a third, the interview for him was at an end. In desperation, for I knew the other places were closed, I offered to pay the man the seven hundred francs if he would take the ma- chine back the next day, and give me my money back. No, he would not do that. I suggested that I take one of his old machines and deposit the seven hun- dred francs. "If I do not bring the machine back," I said, "you will have sold a second-hand machine for seven hundred francs." That would not do. 35 PARIS REBORN The only other thing I could think of was that he deliver me a machine on rental in care of a hundred million dollar American corporation, whose large of- fice-building was near his establishment, and who would be a guarantee of my good faith. No, he would not do that either. So I left the imbecile running his hands through his hair, and waiting for the deluge to come. I cite this story in extenso, be- cause it illustrates how the panic in business was af- fecting even Americans in responsible positions. It was now three o'clock, and I did not have my typewriter. Suddenly, I thought of a large Amer- ican firm who had a buying office in the wholesale quarter. I did not know the French manager, but had credentials which made me feel that he might be induced to lend me one of his office machines. I met him in the hallway, and started to explain what I wanted. He cut me short. "I am leaving for the front to-morrow," he said, "and my English stenographer cleared out this morn- ing. In my office, you can have the machine." "Good," I answered. "Here is my address. Please send a boy over with it to my hotel." He fingered my card, and looked at me with as- tonishment. "Young man," he said, "if you really want that typewriter, you just take it off the table and carry it out of here yourself right away." I took it. 36 I shall never forget walking down the Boulevards all the way from Marguery's to the Opera Comique without seeing a single free taxi. On the afternoon of a summer day such an experience in Paris seemed unbelievable. But it was very real to me with that typewriter banging against my leg at every step. Before I got back to my hotel it was five o'clock. Now I am at my hard-earned machine. One only knows what a typewriter means when he wants it badly and has n't got it. Ten p. m. The typewriter occupied my thoughts so fully this afternoon that I did not think of money until after I had posted my letter. It was then half past six. I still had my hundred-franc note unbroken — and unbreakable. The five-franc pieces the Lawyer had given me on Sunday afternoon were gone. Luckily, there was the rendezvous with the Sculp- tor for dinner at Marie's. As I turned away from the post-office and crossed the Place de Rennes in front of the Gare du Montparnasse, I found my- self in the midst of a man hunt. Some one had said that a man making for the station was a German, and that he had cried in a loud voice, "Vive VAlle- magne" No one stopped to ascertain if the charge were true or not. The victim was hit several times 37 PARIS REBORN over the head by the inner ring of the crowd that gathered. He evidently had some friend, though. For, as I worked my way in to see what the matter was, he had succeeded in getting clear, and ran into the Cafe La venue. The crowd started after him. Quick as a flash, the cafe doors were closed. I man- aged to get in by another door. Some fifty men were inside the cafe. It was a strange sight to see the "spy" jammed against the wall on the high box where Paris had so long been accustomed to watch Schumaker bring forth delight- ful melodies from his violin. The man was trying to talk. His words were drowned in the angry roar. The police came just in time. First they cleared us out of the cafe, and then formed a cordon around the supposed German, and got him across the street into the railway station. "Is he really a German spy1?" I asked the waiter on the terrace of Lavenue. "Why, no. I 'm sure he is not. He is a whole- sale wine merchant who lives at Meudon, and from whom all the cafes around here buy. He is just as French as I am." "But if you know him, why did n't you vouch for him — the proprietor and, you other men of the cafe1?" The waiter shook his head. "That would have been a dangerous game," he said. "Who can reason 38 THE CONFLAGRATION IS INEVITABLE with a crowd? Our whole place would have been wrecked." I looked at him in admiration. If you want a keen judge of human nature, get a waiter. As I walked down the Boulevard du Montpar- nasse, I ran into my old concierge. "Teens!" he ex- claimed. "Where did you come from1? Are Madame and the children with you*?" I told him how I had come to town to see the mobilization. He shook his head in wonder at the things Americans would do. Some were crazy to get out. Others were flying straight to Paris at a time like this! "But the Germans are not here, and I think they will not get here very soon — if ever. I am more interested in the prospects of changing a hundred- franc note than in the Germans." "A hundred-franc note is not money now," he commented. Just as we were parting, he grabbed my sleeve impulsively. "But does Monsieur need money?" he asked. "I can give you some silver." "Rene," I said, "how much real money, as you call it, have you got1?" "Forty francs," he replied, and took out his purse. "But half of it is yours." I did not need the money, for I was going to meet the Sculptor. But I would not have hesitated to borrow from Rene. The gruff exterior of a Paris 39 PARIS REBORN concierge covers the warmest heart that beats. Men or women, they are the same. They scold and they growl, but they will share their last crust with you. One who has had an apartment in Paris need never feel that he lacks a friend. The Sculptor had been to the Rue Descartes. No Artist yet ! Marie's was full of parting reserv- ists. The whole large family, connected mysteri- ously with the restaurant which would hardly seem large enough for themselves to eat in, was gathered around one table in the corner. We had to wait a bit for our meal. They were leaving, sons and sons-in-law, brothers and brothers-in-law, at seven o'clock. If there were tears, aprons were used adroitly ; for we did not see them. It was a boister- ous send-off, to which we contributed the price of three bottles of Beaujolais. After they were gone, we ate our meal in haste at a little table on the sidewalk. Marie said the order had come to close at eight o'clock. No lei- surely glass of coffee after the meal. We could not understand this sudden cutting off of what seemed to be as essential to one's every-day life as the air one breathed. After the Sculptor had paid, we walked down to the Closerie des Lilas. Shut up tight. It was the same on the Boulevard St. Michel. This was the consequence — no, more than that, the solution — of the events of last night. On a wall we 40 THE CONFLAGRATION IS INEVITABLE read the proclamation of General Michel, the mili- tary governor. Cafes are to close in Paris at eight o'clock. The sale of absinthe is prohibited at all hours of the day. The Sculptor said he would go to bed. There was nothing else to do. I made the same decision. I walked back to my hotel along a silent boulevard. No lights except an occasional gas lamp of the last decade; no tramways, no motor busses. The only noise was the steady tramp of regiments passing si- lently toward the Gare. The war is on ! Paris is taking it in earnest. IV THE DAY OF THE BELGIAN ULTIMATUM August fourth. THIS morning the newspapers stated that Ger- many had addressed an ultimatum to Belgium, demanding free passage for her army to the French frontier, and that sixty thousand Germans have oc- cupied the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. I did not have to leave my room to see the effect of this news upon the people of Paris. My balcony looked out on the side-street of the Felix Potin -branch of the Rue de Rennes. Felix Potin is the largest grocery establishment in Paris. Early in the morn- ing, before the hour of opening, several thousand purchasers, holding big baskets and potato-sacks, were waiting like depositors making a run on a bank. When I tried, half an hour later, to force my way through the crowd towards breakfast, it was a solid — but by no means passive — mass. A hurry-up call had been sent in for the police, who were having difficulty in getting through the crowd themselves to protect the doors of the grocery. Generally, Felix Potin puts out on the sidewalk a most delight- 42 THE DAY OF THE BELGIAN ULTIMATUM ful variety of fruits, vegetables and meats to tempt the housewives. But not this morning ! The estab- lishment was tightly shut, and customers were being admitted in Noah fashion at one side-door. From the conversation, I gathered that the Ger- mans were on the way to Paris, that the railways would soon be cut off, and that it was now or never to get some food in. Every one had come prepared to carry off as much as possible of sugar, tea, coffee, and dried and canned vegetables. When I reached the corner there was a big sign, stating that Mr. Felix Potin desired to inform his honorable cus- tomers that he had in his storehouses enough food to feed Paris for six months, but that horses and truck- men were lacking for providing immediately in his retail shops all that customers might desire to buy and for delivering purchases. So, to Mr. Potin's infinite regret, he was compelled to limit the amount of purchase to what one could carry out of the shop. This statement, instead of reassuring "the honor- able customers," made them feel more strongly that they had been justified in rising and girding up their loins early that morning to fight for a few weeks' food supply. Many believed that they could get ahead of Potin by retaining an auto-taxi or cab, to which they could stagger with a heavy load when they left the shop. It was a long line of cabs and autos, such as one sees at a vernissage of the Salon 43 PARIS REBORN or a first night of a Rostand play, and the merry ticking of their taximeters, two sous for every three minutes, that made me pause and get an idea into my thick head. I turned back to look more carefully at the crowd which had discovered at seven A. M. that it wanted dried lentils and peas badly enough for this. Yes, my idea was good. These were not the ordinary Potin early morning buyers, nor the ordinary con- sumers of dried lentils and peas. These were not the workers of Paris — the representative Parisians. No, this scared crowd were all of the class that cuts coupons for a living, or of those who are accustomed to cry amen to the editorials of the Temps against a graduated income tax with an exemption for mod- est incomes. I was amused and relieved. I thought to myself that here were the Parisian counterparts of some Americans I had seen yesterday at the bank. The bank! I had not yet changed my hundred-franc note nor secured any money. So I turned my steps across the river. I could see one change from yesterday. Wherever there were French and Russian flags, a British flag had been added. The ultimatum to Belgium is panicky in that it bids fair to cause France to be caught, before her mobilization is completed, by an overwhelming invasion of the northern frontier. 44 THE DAY OF THE BELGIAN ULTIMATUM But there is comfort in the thought that now Great Britain has one more strong and compelling reason to enter on the side of France, and to enter immedi- ately. The speeches reported from the House of Commons last night can have no other meaning than that this is the intention of the British Cabinet. The bank was bad enough, but not so bad as yester- day. They actually let me have five hundred francs ! I have never felt so rich in my life. Now for the terrace of the Cafe de la Paix ! As I swung around the corner of the Opera, al- most opposite the office of the American Express Company, I found myself face to face with the Teacher. I call him that, although he is now the head of one of our very greatest American universi- ties. I call him that because I think of him as that, just as many thousands of his old boys, scattered all over the world, are thinking of him as he used to stand before our eyes in the weekly chemistry lec- ture, with the test tube in his hand, the enthusiasm of his subject lighting up his face and the love of his boys lighting up his eyes. And they are think- ing of him, because his is a personality, which, once having touched the life of youth, has never left the object of contact. Is there any other man in Amer- ica who actually knows by their first names thou- sands of the best-equipped men of the nation, and who has followed their careers, although one decade 45 PARIS REBORN or two decades, or more than that, have passed since they sat under him in the classroom*? There is no nobler title a man can have than that of Teacher, and when I say that this professor of chemistry glorifies the title, one can realize how glad I was to see him. "What a joy to meet you here !" I cried. And, when he told me that his wife was with him, my joy was greater still, for there are some teachers who have taken unto themselves partners that share the affection they receive from their students. "I am just going over there, Herbert," said the Teacher. "And after I have gotten some money and my mail, I am going to see about my steamship passage for next Saturday on the French line." I looked "over there," and saw the mad strug- gling mass before the doors of the Express Company, stretching around into the Rue Auber up to the point where it mingled with the equally mad, struggling mass, turned in the other direction, which was be- sieging the office of the Compagnie Generale Trans- atlantique. "But, Doctor," I expostulated, "you are really not going to try to get into either of those places, are you*? Can I not stand for you"? It is incredible for me to think of you having to do such a thing." He shook his head sadly. "Herbert," he said, "I have done lots of things these last few days that I THE DAY OF THE BELGIAN ULTIMATUM had never dreamed of doing. Yesterday Mrs. and I stood in line from morning to night at the Em- bassy to get a certificate of nationality, and after I get through with the bank and steamship office, I have to go and stand in line at the police station for our permis de sejour. These are things that must be attended to personally, and at a time like this I have no right to ask for special favors. The sister of the President of the United States was among those in line at the Embassy yesterday. We all waited our turn." I could say nothing. There was nothing to say. The Teacher was right. After having made an en- gagement with him for dinner that evening, I watched him cross the street and enter the line. There was a man, honored in the great university city above all men. At home, for the privilege of talking a few minutes with him, who would not have waited hours'? As the Teacher crossed to take his place at the end of the mob on the Rue Scribe, I saw an auto-taxi draw up in front of the door at the corner. Mr. Got-Rocks-and-Lets-You-Know-It stepped out ma- jestically, and started to wave his way through the line. A policeman shook his head, and pointed to the end of the line. There was a bellow of rage, a nervous hand thrust into a breast-pocket, a wallet produced, and the fumbling for a card. I did not 47 PARIS REBORN stay to watch the comedy. The bellow of rage was undoubtedly an indignant "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM*?" and it was undoubtedly answered as often as reiterated by a despairing and fatalistic shrug of blue-coated shoulders. It is a great thing for the frog called Pompous Picayuninity to get out of its little pond occasionally ! I went back to my hotel, hoping for some word from the Artist. More joy! There he was, sitting in the corridor, waving a bamboo cane, twirling the scarcely perceptible upward curve of a scarcely perceptible mustache, and looking as if he had stepped out of a Fifth Avenue tailoring establish- ment. There is no greater illusion than to think that in art and in music the spotted shirt, the shape- less coat, and the creaseless trousers are the inevitable accompaniment of the man who has the "vital spark." Poor grooming betokens the one on whom the muses have turned their back almost as con- clusively as it betokens the failure in any other line. While shining shoes are by no means the sign of a shining intellect, dull shoes pretty generally accom- pany a dull intellect. Is n't it curious how often deep satisfaction is ex- pressed by the milder forms of profanity*? "Where in ?" I do not know whether I re- membered in time that I was a parson or that the Artist broke in to save me. THE DAY OF THE BELGIAN ULTIMATUM "Well," he began with that dear drawl of his, by which the insulation of nonchalance covered the real live wire only to the superficial observer, "I have had the deuce of a time since you left me at Pont-Croix two weeks ago. No, I didn't make love to that pretty girl at the station, because, you remember, she had a baby in her arms as she punched your ticket." I started to laugh. "That 's not the reason — " I laughed still harder. "Sounds worse, does n't it*? But I did n't start to talk romances. I see in your eye that you want to know how in the , that is, how I got here. Came in this morning, old buck; free ride all that way up. Free, mind you. This is how it happened. When I saw that mobilization poster up on the wall of the Maine, thought I had better get down to Douar- nenez. Could n't afford to be caught in a hole like Pont-Croix, where my face would not pass me free into the dining-room for an indefinite length of time. You know I calculated on just enough money until the thirteenth, and had paid my passage back to New York on that date as a precaution. So I went into the Maine and asked for a laissez-passer to Paris. Monsieur le Maire gave it to me all right, and I made him put all the rubber stamps he had in the office on it, got into a train loaded with reservists, and waved the laissez-passer at the conductor, who 49 PARIS REBORN was hurrying through as if he did not expect to find any ordinary travelers on the train. At Douarnenez and Nantes, I did n't leave the station, just kept well inside; so I came moseying on to Paris with the re- servists. A number of them asked me what day I was called out for, and I just grinned, and they thought I was an Englishman, and kept explaining to each other that Englishmen could go out any time they wanted to, or not at all if they did n't want to. They were just as I find them here — all the French seem fearfully nervous about whether the English are com- ing into this game. What do you think about that?" "Not so fast!" I remonstrated. "We'll leave Asquith and Sir Edward Grey and Lloyd-George out of the conversation until you tell me what you did when you got on the station platform at Paris. Did your laissez-passer stand good for a ticket to the col- lectors at the exit, and what did they think of your label-bespattered suitcase and your painting kit? Did you pass for a war artist, the successor of Vere- schagin*?" "I did think that was going to be a rub, but the Gare d' Orleans was in a state of confusion this morning that you can't describe by any other word than — just French. No travelers around, although you had to scramble over their trunks to get off the platform. Just bunches of men coming and going, and not knowing which they were doing. No por- 50 THE DAY OF THE BELGIAN ULTIMATUM ters either, so I just made a camel of myself, and marched slowly but boldly up the stairs and through the crowd. No one paid any attention to me. Say, I did have a time getting a cab. Had to walk all the way up the Quai to the Rue Bonaparte before I saw anything, and then I landed a one-eyed driver with a lame horse only because I saw him first. I put everything in the cab, jumped in myself, and poked him in the backbone to give him my address before he knew he had me. He protested that he was just about to go back to the stables to give his horse something to eat, but I answered that from the looks of the horse he would n't mind missing just one more meal. He looked as if he had lost the habit so long ago that he had forgotten how. So we crawled up behind the Pantheon to the studio. There I found your card, and, as soon as I had per- formed three days' ablutions, I came over to hear the good word. Now tell us how you got on from Morlaix." At this point the Man from Texas and two Scotch doctors broke in upon us. There is an American cinematograph actor, well known to Parisians — and certainly one of their fa- vorites— who is, I believe, called Bunny. If that is n't the name, you will know whom I mean when I say that a fatter actor with a larger, rounder face never trod the boards in our generation. The Man 51 PARIS REBORN from Texas is Bunny's twin brother. He was an Alsatian half a century ago. His family got out of Colmar at the time of the annexation. In Texas he had evidently gained more than his three hundred pounds, for "money was no object." Many Ameri- cans have met him, as have I, on transatlantic steam- ers, and have smoked his Havanas. His face was beaming, as only a face like his could beam, as he stretched out his broad paw to greet us. He introduced the Scotch doctors in such high-flowing terms that I did not realize that he was describing me. So I promptly passed the imputa- tion of celebrity on to the Artist. The Man from Texas wanted us, as neutrals, to assure his Scotch friends that the British Bulldog was honor bound to fasten his teeth in the Kaiser's trousers, and, as mili- tary experts, to maintain that General Joffre should promptly throw the bulk of the French army into Alsace, leaving the defense of Belgium to the British. "This must be for us an offensive war !" he cried. "The first thought of every Frenchman called to arms is to rescue the enslaved of the Lost Provinces. That I should have lived to be in Paris on this day!" When lunch time came, after we had listened for half an hour to a continuous chorus of "Aye, aye," from the Scotchmen, and had warded off, as best we could, the successive suggestions of aperitifs (our 52 THE DAY OF THE BELGIAN ULTIMATUM best was n't very good) on the part of the Man from Texas, we escaped to hunt up the Sculptor. Until the news arrived of King Albert's splendid answer to the Kaiser and of his appeal to France and to Great Britain, there was the lull of terrible uncer- tainty in Paris this afternoon. We hoped to hear this evening of a British ultimatum to Germany, but extras are no longer allowed. No news from Lon- don has yet reached us. The Artist and I dined with the Teacher and his wife. The Teacher has known Germany well since student days in Heidelberg, and has received many honors and widespread recognition in the land of intensive science. But his type of mind is not Ger- man, in the sense of what we mean by "German" to-day, or he would not have been to us the Teacher. We dropped the subject of the war. We were glad to talk of something else. As we walked homeward through the silent streets, our minds were turned back over the span of years to other days. 53 V REQUISITIONING August fifth. IT is regrettable that I should feel compelled to say that the Cafe de la Poste is at the corner of the Rue du Bac and the Boulevard St. Germain. You would be insulted if I thought it necessary to mention the location of the Cafe de la Paix. And yet, the real Paris of the real Parisian can be seen better from the foot of the Boulevard Raspail than from the head of the Avenue de 1' Opera. There you pay a double price for your consommation in order to watch Paris passing by, and what you see is tourists passing by. You look on them as part of Paris, and they look on you as part of Paris. But the man with the picture postal cards and the maps knows both you and them. At the Cafe de la Poste, on the other hand, you are in Paris, and Parisians sit there watching Parisians pass by. You see the automobiles and the phaetons of those fashionables of the first mark who would look upon living near the Etoile as Fifth Avenue would upon living in Hoboken or as Grosvenor Square would look upon 54 REQUISITIONING living in one of those places for which you have to change at Clapham Junction. You see, too, the shoppers who know how and what, passing between the Petit St. Thomas and the Bon Marche, and cockers and chauffeurs hovering around who are looking for fares upon whose tips they can depend. I had been waiting for almost an hour when I was suddenly aware of the fact that the Artist was stand- ing across the street with his legs spread out reminis- cently of shipboard, twirling absentmindedly his bamboo cane, and looking up at a batch of posters on the pedestal of the statue of the man whom the French claim to have got there before Morse and Marconi. I slipped quietly across the street. This almost hazardous feat of a normal mid-day was easily and quickly accomplished. For I have never seen Paris so free of motor vehicles. It was the reason for this that was engrossing the Artist's attention. "Say, old man," was his greeting, "d* you see this notice about automobiles being presented at the Es- planade des Invalides this afternoon for requisition? How about going along after we have got our permits for the front from the War Department? It is just a step beyond through the Rue St. Do- minique." Not a word about why he was late, or even that he was late. But the enthusiasm over his sugges- 55 PARIS REBORN tions (I use the plural advisedly, for I had no more thought of the permits for the front than of going to the requisitioning) caused me to forget the three quarters of an hour I had been trying to make a single Dubonnet hold out. Over a luscious steak we discussed the fascinating question of the battle-line. A year ago I had given up war correspondence for good and all. Rolling stones may gather polish, but shining is n't eating — you understand what I mean. But the Artist has a way with him, and for the sake of the truth (even if it does involve the risk of revealing to two women that their husbands are not yet wholly cured of that fatal itch for adventure) I must confess that we be- gan to plan in earnest the securing of passes for a trip towards the Belgian or Alsatian frontier. I say towards rather than /m///-addicted friend who is no more interested in my fourteenth-century history than I am in his steel rails f.o.b. Pittsburgh. I go the length of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Boulevard de la Madeleine without meeting any one I know. Paris is thinning out these days. The Artist had to go home to his wife. I reconciled myself to his departure because it was necessary. But how about those that deserted the ship be- fore the first leak had sprung*? How about the oth- ers who are getting ready now to desert it if the real news is what we fear it is ? I can tell from the faces of those I pass that the old axiom of "no news is good news" has no acceptance in Paris. Of the many cafes on the Rue Royale, the dullest of them all (before midnight) is the one best known to Americans. It is equally dull after midnight, because it is so evidently a "plant" for the stranger within our gates. But these days there is no after midnight. Maxim's is in the depths. Its terrace is never much frequented, so I am surprised to find the Pasha sitting there. His pasty face is expres- sionless ; the fleshy bags under his eyes do not quiver a bit; and the curve of his nose is as mournful as a crow's in a cornfield before the spring sowing. He fingers his glass by its fragile stem, turning it around on the saucer, and gazes out into the deserted street as if there were nothing in his mind or there. PARIS REBORN Certainly there is nothing of interest in the street, usually so animated at this hour. Here I was, al- most at the Hotel Crillon, and I had not been tempted anywhere to sit down. There was n't even a pretty girl carrying a box that unmistakably indi- cated its contents and her profession, whose looks and dress demonstrated her superiority and attrac- tion to the demi-mondaine with rings that the honest toil of a milliner's lifetime would not suffice to pur- chase. There was nothing in the street. But one would do injustice to the Pasha to believe that there could be nothing in his mind. A mystery of a parasitical and lazy stock, like that of the landowning Turks, is that it has given to the world keen, alert men who have failed to become giants in the domain of mind only by the hopeless lack of opportunity afforded by their governmental and social system. Some Pashas may be fools : but not this one. This was not steel rails f.o.b. Pittsburgh, but it was just as welcome. So I greeted him. "May I be permitted two questions, Excellence?" I asked, and without waiting for the permission con- tinued, as I grasped a cordially outstretched hand: "A — Why do you sit in front of Maxim's, and B — What makes you look so much sadder than usual*?" "I shall answer A, and prove the sincerity of my answer by action while I answer," he said, rising 146 SILENCE: FOR THE CENSOR IS AT WORK from his seat. "One alone might as well sit here as anywhere, but now that you have come, let us go on up the street to Weber's. When we get there, I shall answer B." Weber's was full. No table. Ah ! there was the Lawyer, shoveling ice into a vermouth-cassis with his left hand, for the right was gesticulating wildly under the nose of a French cavalry officer. Two more chairs were produced from somewhere, and the Pasha appealed to the Lawyer and the Cavalry Of- ficer. "Do I look sadder than usual*?" he asked. "I do not object to the adjective, but only to the compara- tive degree. I lost the physiognomical ability of ever looking sadder when I sat with my soldiers in the trenches at Tchataldja, trying to prevent them from getting cholera by forbidding them to eat raw vegetables and at the same time to pacify the call of their stomachs by promises that bread would cer- tainly come from Stamboul before nightfall." The Lawyer and the Cavalry Officer looked at each other. "When your mind is agitated by something bad, there is always the relief of something worse that has already actually happened to comfort you," almost whispered the Cavalry Officer. The Lawyer shot him a swift glance of sympathy. The Pasha continued: "This takes me back to those evenings at Tokatlian's in Pera less than two H7 PARIS REBORN years ago when you used to come hovering around to get our interpretation of the communiques of the Agence Ottomane." The Pasha was looking at me. "We did n't know what was going on, and you knew that we did n't know, and that nobody knew. Yet there was always the question — What do you think? Now here we are up against the same old problem in Paris. The communiques do not communicate : ergo, rumors are breeding fast. The less news in the pa- pers, the more canards in the air. Into these long blank places in our journals we read far more fan- tastic and disquieting things than what was actually there, struck out by the pencil of a foolish censor who was afraid that the truth might have 'a bad effect upon the people.' " The Cavalry Officer got ahead of the Lawyer with a quick exclamation of approval. "If that was true for Constantinople, it holds doubly true for Paris. I know my people. There is no mean possible, un- less we have both extremes at once. To keep us where we ought to be in frame of mind we should have good and bad news on the same page: God knows there are both in store for us at this very mo- ment ! A donkey, placed at equal distance from two bales of hay, could n't make up his mind which to tackle : so he stood still and went hungry. We need to be like that donkey now. Elation, whether justi- fied or not, is dangerous at the beginning of a gigantic 148 SILENCE: FOR THE CENSOR IS AT WORK struggle, such as this is bound to be. So is depres- sion. To avoid both of these extremes, let us have good news and bad news at the same time." I agreed. But the Lawyer shook his head. He did more than that: he shook both hands, and brought them down on the table with a force that startled our glasses. "On the contrary, on the contrary. All three of you are wrong. You don't understand. Let me explain. Your fundamental error is this. You as- sume that everybody has your brains, your training, your mental poise. You think of how you feel, and say I AM THE PUBLIC. You are not. You belong to an exotic one per cent., and have no more right to speak for the Public than you have to speak for the Germans. "The Public is a child, a little child, a baby in arms, and if it has developed any instincts, any ten- dencies at all, they are feminine. You protect and shield a baby from shock; you feed it milk as you feed it medicine — in small doses. Anything pleas- ant, anything happy, you let the child see and share with it. If you possibly can, and to the last minute, you keep evil from the child. You talk about psy- chology. The Censor thinks more logically than you do. He knows well that harm is wrought not by evil itself, but by the anticipation of evil. 149 PARIS REBORN Canards, less true than the facts, about what is going to happen, or more exaggerated than the facts, do less harm than the facts. Half who hear them say, 'Well, they may not be true — they 're canards, after all.' The other half would get excited no matter what did or did not happen. But the facts, if un- favorable, work on the nerves of the Public, and, when the blow falls, the Public is less able to bear up than if the blow came unexpectedly." I began immediately to muster up arguments to combat the Lawyer's position. But the Pasha and the Cavalry Officer were agreeing with him, and I could not get myself heard. These lawyers cer- tainly have a way with them. We four dined together. The conversation turned into other channels. The Pasha's story of what happened at Kirk Kilisseh and Lule Burgas I may repeat another time. It does not belong here. We were all of us thankful for the diversion. But I venture to say that the Lawyer, the Cavalry Offi- cer, and the Pasha himself are going to bed to-night with the same questions in their head that I have in mine. WHERE ARE THE GERMANS REALLY"? HAVE THEY BROKEN THROUGH*? ARE THEY PARIS-BOUND"? For, on my way home, I read the latest com- munique. It says : "The Franco-British lines have been slightly brought backwards; the resistance con- 150 SILENCE: FOR THE CENSOR IS AT WORK tinues. ... In the meantime, the Russians are marching on the roads of Eastern Prussia, and Ger- many is invaded." And, more significant than the slight retreat of our armies is the announcement that the Cabinet has resigned, and that Viviani has formed a new Cabinet with Briand, Delcasse, Ribot, Millerand, Sembat, and Guesde for additional col- leagues. This is certainly "a Ministry of National Defense." Is history going to repeat itself? After 1870, 1914*? Only six days ago, the official communiques boasted: "It is pleasant to state that there is no longer a single point of French territory occupied by the enemy, save a slight bit at Audun-le-Roman." But — "the Russians are advancing on Berlin." Cold comfort this. I do not believe it, and I find that I am not alone. As my concierge puts it, "It is not the Russian advance on Berlin, but the German advance on Paris that interests us." XVII THE AFRICAN TROOPS PASS THROUGH August twenty-ninth. I AM glad these days that I am living on the "Boul Mich." It is a direct thoroughfare from north to south, and is thus a favorite route for troops going to the front. Last night I had hardly finished dinner when a hubbub in the street drew me to the door. For over two hours I stood on the sidewalk, with interest never flagging, as regiments from Africa passed, and re- ceived a greeting from the people of Paris. They started about eight o'clock to go through our boule- vard. Long after I had gone to bed, I heard the clatter of horses' hoofs on the asphalt, the jangle of harness and creaking of wheels of the gun-carriages, the laughter and cheers of the spectators, and the quick repartee of the soldiers. I cannot help feeling that the French will regret the introduction of large bodies of African troops into the war on European soil. If the Allies are honestly anxious to avoid sullying their arms with the atrocities of which they accuse the Germans, they 152 THE AFRICAN TROOPS PASS THROUGH will not fail to see the mistake of this move. It is only dire necessity — and perhaps the desire to fore- stall an appeal of the Germans to Islam through their alliance with the Khalif at Constantinople — that could have dictated this move. The Battle of Leipzig, which brought about the downfall of Napoleon's military power, has been called the Battle of Nations. All Europe was in- volved in that struggle. But 1914 is going to mark a new epoch in the history of the world, for the com- position of the battle-line between the Marne and Aisne will see gathered under the British and French flags soldiers from every continent in the world. Let them come in hordes, the volunteers from Spanish America and Canada and Australia. These are white men. They have the right to shed their blood in deciding the destinies of Europe. Europe is their mother, both as to blood and as to civiliza- tion. But what can we say of the Moroccans, the Berbers, the Senegalese, the Hindus, the Sikhs, the Sepoys, the Gurkhas, the Afghans, and the Burmese*? It would have been well if the Hague Convention had forbidden Colonials, other than of pure Eu- ropean blood, to be employed in wars upon the con- tinent of Europe. The French have always bitterly opposed this. Their corps of African sharpshooters did valiant service against the Prussians in 1870. Now, more than ever, does France feel that she must 153 PARIS REBORN rely upon her African subjects to help in reducing her great numerical inferiority to the Germans. Great Britain, too, smarts under the handicap of her ridic- ulously small trained army, and seeks to increase her forces by calling in her troops from India. Perhaps I am wrong. It may be the part of wis- dom to use this opportunity for emphasizing the soli- darity of all the elements — especially the Moslem element — in the Colonial empires of France and Great Britain. But God help the Germans when they fall into the hands of these Turcos ! It may be a foolish misgiving. But I could not watch them pass towards the Gare du Nord without the fear that the flags of the Powers of western Europe may be dishonored before the year is over. The Parisians are not thinking of such an eventu- ality. What I saw last night is sufficient proof of the enthusiasm with which this aid is being received and the confidence which it inspires. These are dark days, indeed, for Paris. Who knows but what the Turcos may prove a tower of strength in the defense of the city? When we come to the elemental con- siderations of self-defense, "Necessity knows no law." There must have been two divisions, one of Senegalese and the other of Turcos. They were a sharp contrast to the regiments of reserv- ists we have become accustomed to see. Instead 154 THE AFRICAN TROOPS PASS THROUGH of the pale faces of city men, torn from the desk and the counter to shoulder arms, here were swarthy war- riors, covered with dust and grime. They swung along with a gait, in which the nonchalance of their French officers was mingled with the suppleness of the savage, and the habitude of the professional sol- dier. The delight at the ovation they received was that of children. Every one had something to give, to- bacco, beer and wine in bottles, cakes of chocolate, flowers, and — where the purse was lacking — the heart of the midinette, more gamine on the "Boul Mich" than anywhere else in Paris, bestowed kisses regardless of color. Officers smiled gaily, and waved their hand at every pretty girl. No sharp word was spoken when a soldier left the line and made a dive through the crowd to a door, where a beaming shopkeeper held out offerings from his stock. From the saddles of officers, from the barrels of soldiers' rifles, bunches of flowers sprouted. On one soldier's back cakes of chocolate protruded from his extra pair of boots. At another's belt dangled a choice sausage, hitting his bayonet sheath at every step. The Turcos made good use of their limited French. They were hoarse from responding to the Au revoir, Bon courage, Bonne chance, Sus a Guillaume, and other sentiments of the crowd. They assured the 155 PARIS REBORN Parisians that they would "eat the Germans," and that Wilhelm's day would be over when they reached the front. We do not know where the Germans are, but we are sure they are near. At any moment, the bom- bardment may begin. Before they attack Paris, however, they will have to fight a colossal battle. To us, accustomed to think of the march of soldiers as the monotonous routine of a machine, and of im- pending disaster as something that weighs down the heart and makes the face sad and words few, the scenes of the "Boul Mich" last night afford a revelation of character and of temperament far dif- ferent from ours. The passing of these Turcos, going to their death at a critical moment in the his- tory of the world — for I cannot too strongly empha- size my belief that Paris is France, and that France is the world — would seem to the Anglo-Saxon an event whose outlines were to be faithfully drawn only by a sober description of a silent and tearful reception. That is not the way of Paris. The nature of the Parisian is eternal youth, where laughter and tears come in quick succession. The tears, however, are only the passing cloud, for Paris is always full of sunshine, full of hope. Death and disaster are borne with a spirit we would do well to emulate. The superficial observer calls fickleness what is 156 THE AFRICAN TROOPS PASS THROUGH really heroism. How much more life holds for the community that knows how to laugh, that does laugh, even when the tide is adverse, and leaves to the morrow its burden of suffering and horror. 157 XVIII THE TAUBEN * BRING US NEWS August thirtieth. AT the time of the advance of the Bulgarians on Constantinople two years ago, we who were in the Turkish capital did not realize that the Turks had been defeated in Thrace until hordes of fright- ened refugees began to fill the streets of old Stam- boul. They gave the lie eloquently and irrefutably to the official communiques. We have some refu- gees in Paris. They are said to be all Belgians. Yesterday, however, I saw some who admitted that they had come from Lille. But if we wanted proof that the Government has withheld news of reverses from us, it was furnished to-day in a romantic and dramatic fashion. Per- haps it has been accompanied by tragedy. That I have not yet been able to ascertain. Shortly after noon a German aviator, flying at the height of six thousand feet, was seen appearing iThe Taube is a type of German aeroplane. The French have adopted the word. 158 THE TAUBEN BRING US NEWS from the direction of Montmartre. He came over the city as far as the Gare du Nord, to destroy which he let fall three bombs. A pennant of the German colors, eight feet long and weighted by a sand bag, fell in the Rue des Vinaigriers. It bore the mes- sage: "The German army is at the gates of Paris. There is nothing for you to do except surrender. Lieuten- ant von Heidssen." The Germans have devised a startling method for giving us information not yet published by our news- papers. Is it any truer than what our journals tell us? An aeroplane can come a long distance. The aviator may have started his daring flight in Bel- gium, for all we know. Paris has taken this first omen of evil days with remarkable sang-froid. Among the people, I find neither depression nor nervousness. There is no ten- dency to attach importance to this raid. To-night I dined in a boulevard cafe with two volunteers of the Foreign Legion in training at Revil. The Irishman, whom I had barely seen ex- cept in tablier or redingote, looked more like comic opera than stern reality in cowhide boots, baggy red trousers, flapping overcoat, and a kepi that hardly covered half of the shock of black hair surmounting his engaging grin. You see my eyes have followed him from foot to head rather than from head to foot. 159 PARIS REBORN But with the Irishman, one always comes back to the grin — that grin in which nose and eyes are indissolu- bly associated with the mouth. If the Irishman looked out of fit in his French outfit, what shall I say of the Norwegian, who has been for so long the Irishman's companion-at- brushes in a famous little studio of the Rue Vercin- getorix and who is now his companion-at-arms1? The Norwegian (he comes from Iowa, if you please) has a northland face, on which is the stamp of southland refinement. If I did not know that he was a painter, I would take him for a college professor who fed on Emerson and Robert Louis Stevenson, and who could be accused of having a longer row of poets on his bookshelves than of the authorities in the field in which he professed. There was no gloom in the restaurant. That was because every table was like our own. These were real folks eating around us, to whom the events of the day were matters of fact, to be accepted and faced, rather than to be rejected and run away from. They were folks who had work to do, and were doing it. They had not time to think of bombs falling upon them. It is only the empty head that has room for imaginary fears. Having done their day's work, these honest Parisians were enjoying the reward of it in a well-cooked and well-washed-down meal. 160 In the Garden of the Tuileries. A Taube had paid its usual six o'clock visit THE TAUBEN BRING US NEWS In such an atmosphere we felt at home, the Irish- man, the Norwegian, and I. We read the evening communique which announced that the houses within the zone of action of the Paris forts were to be razed, and so to be evacuated within four days. Our mili- tary governor is certainly taking Lieutenant von Heidssen at his word, in so far as the first sentence of his message to Paris goes. But he believes, as we all believe, that, even if the Germans are at our gates, there is something else to do but surrender! When we talked of the German aviator who dared to fly over Paris, the Irishman raised his glass. "Far be it from one wearing the uniform that I wear to drink to the health of a German. But I cannot help wishing good luck to the first German invader of Paris. Mighty fine flying that! I ad- mire the rascal's nerve, and am sorry that he had to be a Bocke.1 Here 's to him !" The Irishman expressed the prevailing sentiment of Parisians this evening. Would n't Von Heidssen be surprised if he knew that those whom he came to frighten are surreptitiously toasting him? September second. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday — the German aviators' have come to regard their visit to 1 Boche is the slang word in Paris for Germans. 163 PARIS REBORN Paris a part of their daily routine. We are getting to know the Tauben. A few minutes ago, above the rattle of the type- writer as I was dictating a statement that the patrol organization of the Army Aviation Corps is now so well organized that further visits from German aeroplanes are impossible, I heard the unmistakable whirr of a propeller, followed by shot after shot. My secretary and I stopped short: we ran to the window. There, right above us, flying so low that we could see the two men piloting her, a Taube sailed calmly over the Boulevard Saint Michel. Above the Ecole des Mines the glistening machine made a beautiful turn to avoid the shots that were coming from the Val-de-Grace, and flew back in the direction of the north. There is still the unwilling tribute to the daring of the enemy's airmen. But I can no longer drink a toast to them as I did with the Irishman on Sunday night. For their exploits have included deliberately murderous bomb-throwing. No military advantage has been gained by these bombs. Innocent non-com- batants, women and children, have been struck down upon the streets. Why did this have to be ? Why has daring that wrested unwilling admiration from all been marred in this way1? Now that we see the reason for these raids, we despise the spirit which prompted them. We pity 164 THE TAUBEN BRING US NEWS the mentality of those who planned and executed them. These airmen have come over our city in order to scare us, to strike terror into our hearts, to cause the people to rise up and demand peace in order that Paris may be spared a bombardment. But this purpose has not been accomplished. When the fourth daily visitor interrupted our work a few minutes ago, I put on my hat and hurried out into the street to see how the airman's visit affected the people. On the Boulevard Saint Michel, on the Boulevard Saint Germain, and on the quays, every one was looking towards the Taube, now a speck upon the horizon over Sacre Cceur. If there was excitement, it was because some claimed still to see the machine, and were soundly rating the stupidity of those who could not see it still and maintained that it had disappeared. What comments I heard were prompted by indignation and curiosity and by disgust for the inability of our aviators to prevent the raid. Fear*? I saw no signs of it. When the aeroplane had certainly disappeared, the Parisians went back to their work or to their aperitifs. Newspapers were opened again, and fresh cigarettes lit. The Taube had gone. Why think more about it*? But this evening some have thought more — and PARIS REBORN will think more through the lonely years ahead. For lifeless forms have been lifted from the streets, and many a family, care-free an hour ago, is gathered in the death-chamber of a loved one. 166 XIX THE GOVERNMENT LEAVES US September third. LAST night it was so warm that the Lawyer and I, who had planned to go out to the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore to see how the people around the Place des Ternes were taking things, got no far- ther than the Place de la Concorde. We waited there with the expectant crowd until a Taube had paid the usual six o'clock visit, and then went to sit in the Jardin des Tuileries beside the fountain of the larger basin. Dead leaves had already fallen on the ground, and despite the heat there was something of autumn in the air. Nurses had taken their charges home, and the only children around were the poor little devils who were trying to make a few sous selling La Presse, Llntransigeant, and La Liberte. After settling ourselves as comfortably as we could on the iron chairs the monopolists of Paris gardens rent to you, the Lawyer took out the Temps that he had bought at a boulevard kiosque when he left his office an hour ago. He had not yet unfolded 167 PARIS REBORN it. We didn't expect anything new. The com- muniques for several days have been works of art. What remarkable skill in the combination of mean- ingless phrases ! They are worthy of the Sioux City dealer's description of a job lot of horses he had re- patriated from a Chicago tramway stable, and was palming off as "just arrived from the ranch." So we opened the paper indifferently. There was nothing in the communique except that the English had taken ten cannon from the German cavalry in the forest of Compiegne, that the Germans had "only a curtain of troops" in front of Belfort, and news from Belgium that parts of several Ger- man army corps were returning to Germany. Oh, I forgot! There was also a note that the Minister of War had visited the wounded at the Val-de-Gra.ce, and that the Russians had had another great victory in Galicia. As has been our wont these days, we turned the communique upside down and inside out. The Ger- mans in the forest of Compiegne looked interesting: that the German cavalry were traveling with can- non was more interesting. If there was "only a curtain of troops" before Belfort, why were they al- lowed to remain there, and where was the rest of the German army? The Minister of War at Val-de- Grace? Oh, damn ! A Russian victory in Galicia *? Two damns! 168 \ THE GOVERNMENT LEAVES US The Lawyer and I were reading together. Simul- taneously, when we had thus finished the communi- que, our eyes caught a large proclamation on the back page of the Temps, warning the population of Paris that gatherings on public highways and seditious cries would be punished to the full rigor of martial law: for Paris must remember that the state of siege is in force. "Tiens!" I exclaimed. "To-morrow is the anni- versary of Sedan. What mischief are they expect- ing?" The Lawyer turned a cold but knowing eye from the Temps to me. "More likely the Government has skeedaddled or is skeedaddling this evening, and they want to break the news gently." Three hours before, when the Young American Art Student told me in the Metro that the Govern- ment was going to Bordeaux, or had already gone, I asked him if he really believed a canard like that. I did n't ask the Lawyer. There is something about the Lawyer that makes you think he knows what he is talking about. This morning my concierge called to me as I was going out for breakfast, "Look on the wall of the Ecole des Mines the first thing you do." I crossed the street with a presentiment of some- thing important. Had the Young American Art Student and the Lawyer been right? 169 PARIS REBORN There it was, posted in characters as bold as the words they formed: ARMY OF PARIS! INHABITANTS OF PARIS ! The members of the Government of the Re- public have left Paris in order to give a new im- petus to the national defense. I have received the order to defend Paris against the invader. This order I will carry out to the end. PARIS, September third, 1914. The Military Governor of Paris, Commanding the Army of Paris. GALLIENI. Quite a la Parisienne, there were other affiches. A long, high-sounding proclamation, signed by Presi- dent Poincare, Premier Viviani, and the members of the Cabinet; a proclamation of the Prefect of the Seine; and the reassuring announcement of some ass of a Deputy to the effect that, while others fled, he felt it his duty, like Casabianca, to remain on the burning deck. It took some time to go through these affiches. While I stood glued to the pavement in front of them, other passers-by joined me in reading a new chapter in the history of France. They were all working people like myself, a pushcart woman on the way to the Halles Centrales, a butcher's boy, a 170 THE GOVERNMENT LEAVES US gardener in the Luxembourg, a wreck of an artist or professor (it is n't always easy in the Latin Quar- ter to distinguish), ouvriers in their blouses, loafers, and women of various kinds. From their remarks, as well as from the fresh paste, I gathered that the affiches had just been posted. My entourage was representative of the Paris of seven A. M., which is the Paris that really counts. None was alarmed, none astonished, and, as I am trying here to record what actually happened and how people actually felt, I must state that work-a- day Paris pays little attention to the President's proclamation, and says tres bien to the terse an- nouncement of General Gallieni rather than to the verbosity of those from whom he received the "or- der to defend Paris against the invader." But the chief manifestation was hilarious amusement over the emulator of Casabianca, who signed himself GEORGES BERRY. September fourth. Forty-four years ago to-day, the news of the crushing defeat of Sedan caused the overthrow of the Second Empire. By this sudden and foolish move on the part of the Parisian populace, France was weakened as much as if she had lost a second Sedan. How different the struggle might have turned out, if all parties had rallied loyally around 171 PARIS REBORN the Empress-Regent Eugenie's Cabinet, in spite of its mistakes and the mistakes of the Cabinet it had replaced; how different if France had faced Bis- marck and Europe united ! Internal political strife, rather than the loss of battles, has been the cause of France's military weakness and of her diplomatic defeats. Perhaps it was the feeling that civil strife would again come to their help when their armies pressed victoriously towards Paris that encouraged the Germans to enter upon this war. It would be foolish to deny the palpable fact that Frenchmen are at this minute divided by as deep and as bitter political feuds as they have ever known in the past. There are parties in opposition to each other, intriguing and interfering with the smooth running of the governmental machine at this critical moment. To what can we attribute the removal of M. Hennion as Prefect of Police*? To what can we attribute the scarcely veiled criticisms of M. Clemenceau and others, as soon as things began to go wrong with the initial plan of campaign? However, the Germans are going to be disap- pointed this time. If they have based their calcula- tions on a revolution in Paris, the Government has anticipated this, and has gone to Bordeaux before it is really certain that Paris can or will be invested. For the first time in history — that is, since the days of Charles VII and Jeanne d'Arc — France has been 172 THE GOVERNMENT LEAVES US clear-headed enough to dissociate the fortunes of the capital and the fortunes of the country. Paris, then, is not France. If the Germans come here, they will have as hollow and disastrous a triumph as that which awaited Napoleon at Moscow. In the first place, patriotism has dominated politi- cal passions. There will be strife, perhaps an at- tempt at revolution in France, even if final victory is to France. But this political strife, I am glad to be able to say with conviction, will not come as long as a German soldier is upon French soil. All par- ties have determined, hard as it is for them to control their natural instincts, that they will stand by this present government until the invader has gone. In the second place, it has dawned upon the French that their military and political fortunes do not necessarily stand or fall by the fate of their capital. This has been so often in the past the enervating cause of defeat. There are some who are wise enough, at this time, to advocate the sacrifice of pride and Paris. They say with sagacity and clairvoyance: "Let us not base all our hopes upon Paris, let us not make the pivot of our resistance to the Germans the keeping of them out of the capi- tal." Our natural instinct is to feel that the most sacred duty of the army at the present hour is the defense of Paris. But may there not be a superior tactical 173 PARIS REBORN consideration which would forbid the risk of the shutting up of the French army in this city1? Paris cannot well be defended unless the General Staff is willing to take this risk. If, on the other hand, they are wise enough to withdraw across the Marne, keeping the army intact, the capture of Paris from the military point of view would hardly help the Germans : for its moral effect would be great upon the French only if the French had beforehand set all their hopes upon the defense of the capital. In view of the stake which Russia and Great Britain have in common with France in this war, it is difficult to see how the capture of Paris would effect the general situation. Only one nation in the world is liable to be fooled by such a specious vic- tory. That is Turkey. If the Turkish Cabinet is influenced by the Ger- man march on Paris to cast in its fortunes with Ger- many and Austria-Hungary, it will be a step in ad- vance for civilization. Turkey should commit suicide at this favorable time: for the carving of the bird can be best undertaken when the general European settlement is made after this war! 174 When the aeroplanes had certainly disappeared, the people went back to their work XX THE FROUSSARDS September fourth. WHEN I wrote that the Parisians took the com- ing of the aeroplanes calmly, I was, of course, speaking of real folks, of the million and a half or more who have work to do, and who would soon stop eating if they stopped working. I have refrained from mentioning the frous sards until I had time to watch their antics and could express myself intelli- gently concerning that sad phenomenon, that mani- festation of mob spirit, which some are declaring is a panic. Unfortunately, the one scared man makes more noise and attracts more attention than the nine who are not scared : consequently, I suppose there is much in the American newspapers about the panic in Paris ever since last Sunday, when the first of the Tauben paid us a visit. The overwhelming majority, overwhelming ma- jority, I say, of the people who live in Paris have not been scared, are not scared, and will not be scared. If one limits his observation (as do most of our 177 PARIS REBORN foreign newspaper men) to the region of the Etoile, the Place de 1' Opera, the Place d'lena, the Bourse and the Place Vendome, and to the railway stations and streets leading to certain city gates, he concludes that Paris is very much upset these days, and that there is a mad rush to get away to safety. But if he walks, as I have walked, every afternoon since the so-called panic began, on the Rive Gauche between St. Germain and the outer boulevards, around the Bastille, Belleville, Buttes-Chaumont and other places where lives the Paris that is not affected by the income tax, he sees no sign — none at all — of panic. On the Rue Mouffetard, the Rue St. Antoine, the Avenue d'Orleans, the Rue du Faubourg Poisson- niere, the Rue de Belleville, the outer end of the Rue de Vaugirard — you see I am skipping all over Paris — it is not as on the Avenue Henri Martin and the Avenue d'lena. Instead of grave butlers handing powdered ladies, lap dogs, fat bourgeois rentiers, and a minimum of luggage which is more than the ninety- line per cent's maximum, into luxurious limousines, the outdoor inspirers of Louise are crying all sorts of delicious vegetables and fruits, meats and dairy products, denizens of sea and air that no longer swim or fly. The Paris that works is buying, for the evening meal that will be cooked deliciously on the little gas stove or brazier and eaten as on any of the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of this or 178 THE FROUSSARDS any other year, the wares in the pushcarts of the marchandes des quatre saisons. But I am not writing to-day about the Paris that works. We take no credit for not being scared. If you have no money other than that which you earn from day to day, if running away from your job never enters your head because there is not the price of the railway ticket and because there is no other job (and a job you must have in order to eat) at the other and unknown end of the flight, are you brave or merely sensible? This morning my secretary brought with her to the office another English girl who came to ask my advice about remaining in Paris. I said to her, "Are you dependent upon your situa- tion here for your livelihood*?" She answered, "Yes." Then I asked, "If you go away from Paris do you think it will be easy to get another place*?" She answered, "No." I did not have to hesitate in advising her. I gave her the same advice my secretary and I were both exemplifying. I said, "Stick to your job." She is sticking. So are we, and so are a million and a half other Parisians. Our reason for doing so is patent. There is the whole thing in a nutshell ! I must get back to these froussards. I am not go- ing to attempt to explain what the word means. If 179 PARIS REBORN you don't know already, you will before you have finished this letter. The newspapers have not told us where the Ger- man army is and what are the chances of success in repelling the invasion. One knows better in New York than in Paris what is actually taking place on the battlefield. But we have many other indications of the approach of the Germans than the silence of the newspapers. First of all it was the refugees. Their stories could not be censored. Then the daily appearance of German aeroplanes, and the with- drawal of the Government. Now the class of 1914, boys of twenty, and the older reservists are called out. France needs to-day every man that can han- dle a rifle. We hear that the railway to England, by way of Boulogne and Folkestone, has been cut at Amiens. There is a notice in the newspapers that train serv- ices out of Paris have been quadrupled, and that there is ample accommodation for all who want to leave the city, except in the direction of the north and east. The way this notice is given is typically French. I quote: "NOW THAT THE PERIOD OF MOBILI- ZATION IS OVER THE PUBLIC IS RE- SPECTFULLY INFORMED THAT THERE IS SUFFICIENT ACCOMMODATION AVAILABLE FOR ALL TRAVELERS, 180 THE FROUSSARDS NO MATTER HOW GREAT THE NUM- BER, WHO MAY DESIRE TO LEAVE PARIS TO-DAY." So we are preparing for the investment of Paris. Those who live in houses on the ground within the area of the forts must leave and remove their pos- sessions before Monday, for it is the intention, if necessary, to tear down these houses. The "unem- ployed" have stopped paving the streets and doing other public work, and are digging trenches for the final stand. On the heights of St. Cloud, Meudon and St. Germain, which dominate the city, the great forests have been made impassable by miles and miles of barbed wire, strung from tree to tree, and of heavy copper wire which will be charged, when the need comes, with a deadly current of electricity from the city power plants. Of course this does not mean that Paris will be invested and that a desperate final stand will have to be made. But the Government is very wisely taking no chances. Hoping for the best, we prepare for the worst. In the last two or three days, I have seen a revival of the scenes that occurred at the beginning of mo- bilization, before the resistance of Liege and the of- fensive movement of the French arms led the Paris- ians to believe that the German plan of coming to Paris had failed. Crowds are again gathering round 181 PARIS REBORN the large grocery stores, and once more dry provisions and canned goods are being laid in. "Why once more1?" you may ask. "What has happened to the supplies bought four weeks ago1?" It is a curious fact that, as soon as Paris began to be relieved of its apprehension, people ate up what they had laid in. For two weeks rice and beans and dried fish formed the menu of every meal, amidst much good natured joking, while the fish and vegetable markets were filled to repletion with stocks that spoiled.1 There is nothing half way about the French bourgeois. Either the armies are winning glorious victories or all is lost. We have had our period of exultation ; and now the depression and pessimism is, as an American farmer would express it for want of a better phrase, "something awful." You cannot get a cab to-day. All are bound for the railway stations, where refugees leaving Paris meet refugees from the north coming to Paris. The confusion is indescribable. But the railway men seem to pos- sess an unusual degree of sang-froid for French of- ficials. They are getting out of Paris in very quick time every one who wants to go. The spirit of panic has not been confined to the French themselves. If I saw one American yester- 1 So serious were the losses of perishable food stocks that the Prefect of Police issued a poster in the middle of August, calling attention to the sufficiency and cheapness of food at the Halles Centrales, and urging the people to buy fresh meats and vegetables. 182 THE FROUSSARDS day who was "up in the air," I saw a hundred. They do not know where they are going; but it is any- where to get out of Paris ! For tourists, leaving the city at this time is undoubtedly sensible. It is not only an elementary precaution, but also an act of kindness and thoughtfulness to the Parisians. In case of a siege, feeding idle and useless mouths is simply adding an unnecessary burden. But Ameri- can residents have no reason whatever to leave their homes. They will only be going from Scylla to Charybdis, and will find themselves much more un- comfortable, and exposed to much greater danger in the country than they are in the city, no matter what may happen.1 If tourists are leaving one has only to commend 1 1 have never heard any explanation of the "Official statement" given out by the American Embassy through the columns of the Paris edition of the New fork Herald, advising "all Americans resident in Paris" to leave the city. The least one can say is that it was unfortunate. Without the knowledge of the Ambassador, subordinates in his office, taken by panic themselves, did their best to spread the panic to all whom they met. At this time there was in Paris a volunteer American committee, composed in part of well-intentioned men who were no more than tourists or casual visitors here themselves, but who did not hesitate, in the ante-rooms of our Embassy chancellery, to speak ex ca- thedra. They succeeded in frightening very few. Let it be said to the credit of a majority of the American residents that they resisted these semi-official tendencies to panic, and stayed in their comfortable homes. They had the satisfaction not only of avoiding unnecessary expense and discomfort and business inconvenience and loss, but also of giving a splendid and loyal example of moral support to their French neighbors. 183 PARIS REBORN their good sense. But it is totally different for those foreigners to whom Paris is home, and who have their business here. I cannot understand the spirit which prompts a man to leave his work when he is facing difficulties and, perhaps, danger. It would seem that this would be the challenge to him to try to surmount them. It would seem, too, that no duty could be higher than that of the defense of one's home. The writers who are continually tell- ing us that the French have no word for home are simply repeating a "bromide." There is a word that has around it the most sacred of associations ; it is foyer. Where the hearthfire burns, there is home. To us of foreign birth who have enjoyed the pleas- ures of Paris in its days of joy and prosperity and who have gained inestimable treasures of precious memories by our life and our association with one of the noblest races God has ever created, it is little fitting to be unwilling to share the days of trial. For there is much that we can do by simply staying here and continuing our work, and, if need be, by taking our places with our fellow-citizens in the trenches to defend the city we love. So great was the rush on Monday to leave Paris that the police found themselves in the physical im- possibility of writing the necessary laissez-passers which, under martial law, are required for every one who leaves the fortified camp of Paris. Bending to I *>-y v \ i \^v^ » £ ' • Iff^l ••'JJK fl§, ';- ' -4n The Place Venddme from the Rue de la Paix. You could not get a cab. All were bound for railroad stations THE FROUSSARDS the inevitable, it was announced that these permits would no longer be demanded, and that all who cared to leave the city could do so without any for- mality whatever. The train services to the east and north have been suspended. So the fleeing Parisians are congested in great masses at the railway stations which lead to the west and south of France. It is a case of precipitate flight. The panic is limited to the well-to-do classes, those who have money and are afraid to lose it, those who have luxuries and are afraid to be deprived of them.1 Yesterday on the Boulevard des Italiens great crowds gathered before the Credit Lyonnais waiting their turn to get into their safe deposit boxes : each had a handbag or suit-case. It was a mad rush to with- draw their valuables. For the rentiers have heard (and believe it to be true !) that the Germans looted the vaults of the banks in Brussels. Some of the banks have closed their doors entirely. Most of the wholesale houses are shut. One can go through street after street in the wholesale districts, that are usually humming with industry, and find not a shutter open, not a truck standing before the warehouses, not a single husky drayman with his hook loading bales and boxes. 1 1 know one who declared that he was not afraid of a bombard- ment, but shrank from facing coffee without milk and bread with- out butter ! 187 PARIS REBORN While those that have were worrying about the treasures they had laid up on earth, the far larger class of those who have not — and I am glad I belong to them, because it gives me nothing to worry about — were looking skyward at a particularly auda- cious German airman who had come down pretty close to earth. In the Place de 1'Opera, several British soldiers were taking pot shots at the aero- plane. They were immediately stopped by the policemen, who with the true spirit of red tape which permeates French officialdom, informed them that it was forbidden by the ordonnance of February 29, 1819, or some such ancient date, to discharge fire- arms in the streets of Paris. Their note-books were out, and they were taking the names of the soldiers with the intention of serving them with a proces verbal for breaking this regulation. The soldiers were quite bewildered, as they did not understand French. I suppose they thought that their names were being recorded in order that the Cross of the Legion of Honor might be bestowed upon them. In the meantime, the aeroplane, flying up the Champs Elysees, was the object of a lively bombardment from the rapid-firing guns on the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.1 That was yesterday. 1As I learned later, probably from the lower garden of the Trocadero. 188 THE FROUSSARDS This evening, there is only one place in Paris for taking your aperitif. Most people who have time and money to take aperitifs these days, and who are not engaged in packing their bags, do not know of this place. We were glad of this, the Lawyer and I, when we got out of the Gare de 1'Est-Montrouge tram and made our way through the crowd of out- ward-bound vehicles to the terrace of the cafe op- posite the Porte d' Orleans. For we could get a table in the front row of the terrace facing the fortifi- cations. The spectacle afforded to the observer in this one spot and on this one day of the twentieth century was, sui generis^ unique. Paris is dull around the Opera and the Place Ven- dome and the Madeleine. Paris is empty, or empty- ing, in the de luxe business and pleasure quarters of the Rive Droite. At this hour of sunset no one is in the shops and no one on the streets. Pedestrians have no reason for being there. Taxi-autos and cabs are busy dumping frous sards at the Gares de Lyon, des Invalides, d'Austerlitz, and du Montparnasse, to join the miles-long lines of claimants for standing room in freight-cars, or at the Quai d'Orsay for the river boats to Havre, run by an enterprising Ameri- can who believes in Carpe 'Diem I and is getting rich in a week. But the Porte d'Orleans has never known a busier day since Chauchard's funeral. This is the exit of 189 PARIS REBORN the elite who are spending thousands instead of hun- dreds of francs to get away. An inextricable mass of motor and horse driven vehicles, even of voitures a bras, blocks the streets, waiting their turn to pass from Paris. Outside, automobiles and carriages and wagons are heaped with boxes and bags : inside, they are heaped with froussards. is against human nature to sit long over our five-o'clock 1 this evening. We must get nearer and see the fun. So we dive through the jumble — or jungle! — avoiding with difficulty axle-grease, and treading on horses' hoofs. A single gate is open. Pedestrians pass out at will, but even bicycles and pushcarts must present the magic laissez-passer to the gendarmes on guard. They are looking par- ticularly for automobiles and chauffeurs who may have failed to pass the council of revision during the days of requisitioning and mustering. We could not help wondering what would happen if a motor-car were held up. Turning around would have been impossible, and backing equally impossible. For on both sides, and in the rear, vehicles of froussards swarmed as far as the eye could reach. Outside the gate it was possible to breathe air not tainted with gasoline. We gulped and sniffed with 1 Five-o'clock is the elegant French expression for afternoon tea, and has nothing to do with time. I have seen the sign "Five- o'clock a toutes heures," and there is the verb, "je five-o'clock — nous five-o'clockons." 190 THE FROUSSARDS delight, and looked to see if our clothes were still intact. A taxicab chauffeur who had just received the precious stamp allowing him to pass the outer line of pickets was bending in front of his machine to crank up. A head appeared at the window. Joy of joys, a newspaper man (excuse me, I ought to say journalist or magazine writer) who had come to Paris especially to find "local war color." We accosted him, and were presented to his fellow- travelers, two Frenchmen of the fop type and a Brazilian coffee merchant. He could hardly talk to them. They had picked him up, or he had picked them up, at the Bodega. A waiter had arranged the deal between them. "Sharing this auto to Orleans with these friends here," he explained. "Would come pretty high alone — my fourth comes pretty high as it is. But the Brazilian had the pass, and we others are lucky, don't you think*?" "Why*?" asked the Lawyer, promptly. "Don't know about the other chaps, old man, but I am in luck. Pretty dead here in Paris just now, and I can't risk, anyhow, having my stuff held up. Must go through this week. Then I have a hunch that there is a good story in the stranded Americans being embarked for England and America at Havre. I can always get back to Paris, you know, even if I have to come through the German lines to do it." 191 PARIS REBORN Wh-r-r-r. Chunk-chunk. The engine had started. A hand was waved through the window. "So long!" he cried. "How long?" I cried back. But I think he did n't hear me, or, if he did, he hardly appreciated my repartee. The next car beside the octroi window was filled with a Papa and his three daughters. I offered to bet the Lawyer that the Papa's bag contained a com- fortable pair of bedroom-salon combination slippers. The Lawyer answered that he was not giving away his hard-earned money. But, while we were sure of the slippers, we won- dered how much the Papa had paid for his taxicab. Orleans-bound too. We were sure of that. Too many Uhlans on the direct road to Rouen. Ma foil The Lawyer went up to him, and asked. I took off my hat apologetically to the girls. They giggled. The Papa did not take offense. "Twelve hun- dred francs, the robber," he answered almost life- lessly, even to the denunciation. As we thanked him and were turning away, he put a detaining hand on the Lawyer's arm. "Dzfes done" he demanded anxiously. "Is it true that the Boches have already cut off the road to Orleans? Do you think it safe to go through? Had we not better go to Pithiviers from Etampes, and try to get to Auxerre?" 192 THE FROUSSARDS The chauffeur saved us an answer. "I 'm going to Orleans," he announced briefly, and started the machine. The girls giggled again. It was easy to see that the Papa was the only froussard. There were no shades of horse-meat in 1870 to bother the girls. Others were coming along. But it was dinner- time. We had seen enough. We walked down the Avenue d' Orleans and the Avenue du Maine, in the midst of a perfectly normal evening Paris crowd, who were buying from the pushcarts with their flar- ing lamps and from the outside rayons of the shops. The bell of a moving-picture show was ringing per- sistently, and a "barker" was assuring the passers-by that they would remember this evening's films for a lifetime. "Latest actualites from the battle- front !" he cried persuasively. No sign anywhere of anything out of the ordinary. It is the salvation of Paris, of France, of the world, that most people do not cross bridges until they come to them. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 193 XXI PARIS PREPARES TO RECEIVE THE GERMANS September sixth. NOW that we have got rid of our pessimists and the wealthy panicky element, the spirit of uneasiness and of unrest has left Paris. It would seem as if we had been exorcised, and the devil hav- ing been cast out, we find ourselves calm and peace- ful and clothed in our right minds. We are accus- tomed to the fact that the Government and some of our newspapers have gone to Bordeaux, that the Bank of France and the other great establishments of credit have taken their gold and fled, that our armies have been thrown back in confusion to Chan- tilly, and that we may at any minute hear the Ger- man cannon renewing the tragic and humiliating days of 1870. We are quite accustomed, also, to daily visits of the German aeroplanes. The soul of Paris presents a most interesting study to the psychologist. On the surface there is all the effervescence, the excitability, the fickleness, the changeableness, and the mad rush after pleasures. 194 PARIS PREPARES TO RECEIVE THE GERMANS The tourist sees, and the general reader hears, only of this side of Paris. This is natural, because it is the side in evidence. But the more one lives among Parisians, the more one sees that underneath this ex- terior, which attracts and disgusts as well, there is a solid substructure of purity, of industry, and of devotion to higher ideals. This comes out in the hour of trial. Never, in our generation, has Paris been put to the test that it faces to-day. Deep disappointment has followed several weeks of exultation. A week of uncertainty is now followed by the knowledge that overwhelming disasters have attended every effort of the Allies to check the German advance. In spite of this, and in spite of the suffering and anxiety from which not a single French family is free, Paris, the supposedly excitable, fickle and careless, is show- ing to the world a coolness and a sang-froid that no other city could surpass. This morning I woke with a start, and jumped out of bed. A heavy rumble, quite different from that of a tram going up the hill on the Boulevard St. Michel or of a train in the Sceaux-Robinson subway, made me tingle with excitement. "The German cannon at last!" I exclaimed as I hurried into my clothes. "The great days are be- ginning." But I had forgotten to look out of the window. 195 PARIS REBORN The fig-trees in my little garden were passing on raindrops to the ground, scattering, fitful raindrops, but large ones. In my little patch of sky above, I could see the clouds marshaling for an assault. Thunder ! I had been deceived. What you are ex- pecting, you see, you hear, you feel, you taste. The senses are deceivers, slaves of the brain rather than its masters. I dressed more slowly after I had made up my mind what the rumble really was. But the old idea kept coming back. Perhaps it was both thunder and cannon. / -wanted it to be both! A hot flush of shame and confusion came over me when I made this confession to myself. Who wants to see the Germans beaten more than I do"? And yet, I would like them to come within sight of the goal, and then lose out. So much greater the pun- ishment for the covetousness that prompted the crime. That is the excuse. Is it the real reason of my secret wish"? As I went to the terrace of the Cafe du Pantheon for my morning coffee, the Druggist, whose three sons are at the front, hailed me. "Did it fool you, too4?" he asked. "That unusually deep thunder." "Yes, it did." "I was disappointed when I found I was wrong," 196 PARIS PREPARES TO RECEIVE THE GERMANS declared the Druggist. "If only we could have had the satisfaction of beating them right here !" I felt better. Was the Druggist more honest, though, in his reason than I"? The craving for ex- citement, the love of being in a tight place, is innate. Did you ever see a child chuckling with the fear of his delight, afraid of the dancing bear and yet ir- resistibly drawn towards it; putting his hand a sec- ond time on the stove; crying with disappointment when the big dog from whose bark he shrank ran away without coming near; continuing to tease an older child although fully aware of the rising in- dignation that would bring upon him condign pun- ishment? Some childish traits we do not outgrow. At least I do not. Nor does the Druggist. While I am deciding whether my glass of coffee needs a second lump of sugar, two artists come up, bubbling over with the story of how they were paint- ing in the Valley of the Ourcq when the Germans ap- peared. They were among the refugees who ar- rived in Paris while the froussards were leaving it. "Have you been out to the fortifications to see what they are doing against the coming of the Ger- mans?" asked the Artist with the Vandyke beard. "A man in my line has to work daylight hours to earn a living and hasn't time like you painters to go gallivanting — " The Artist with the full-moon face, who has no 197 PARIS REBORN more hair on the top of his head than he has on the front of it, broke in. "You ought to go," he said succinctly. After lunch, I thought of taking a nap. Sunday afternoon is the one blessed time for that. But the words of the Artist with the full-moon face came back to me. "You ought to go," he had said. I felt certain that there was little to be seen: for I had waved aside the stories I had been hearing for several days of cutting down the Bois de Boulogne and of blowing up houses. Nor could I figure out just what good a system of defense at the inner fortifications would do. And the nervousness about spies made me feel that an attempt to survey the outer fortifications was not just the restful Sunday afternoon occupation I wanted after a hard week's work. Versailles ! The inspiration suddenly came to me that the Dentist was at Versailles, mobilized for Red Cross service, I had heard. Versailles it would be. I might see more there than at St. Cloud or St. Germain-en-Laye and I should have a valid excuse for wandering into forbidden precincts. I tried the Gare du Montparnasse : no trains. Then I went to the Gare des Invalides : no trains. So I thought of the tram from the Louvre. Five minutes in a taxi, and I was there. One minute at the end of the tramway line suf- 198 PARIS PREPARES TO RECEIVE THE GERMANS ficed to destroy my hopes of getting out of the city Versailles-ward to-day. There were at least a thou- sand waiting in a line that extended to the Pont Neuf — not a thousand serious-minded investigators, but a thousand gay, laughing, Sunday-attired Parisians. The men were mostly grandpas or boys, but the women were of all ages from seven months to seventy. They had baskets and boxes for the Sunday evening meal, and I heard numerous ex- pressions of hope that they would get near enough ^ __ to h^ar the Boches, if not to see them. "Just think," exclaimed one Parisienne in her twenties, the size of whose three girls showed that she must have married very young; "we may see the Uhlans coming in, and my children will never forget that as long as they live." I took the Metro to Porte Maillot, with the thought of St. Germain-en-Laye. In front of Luna Park, there was another crowd of the same hopeless length, en queue for the St. Germain tramway. No hope here. As I turned away, I collided with the Archaeolo- gist. What luck! The last time I had seen him, he was showing me the walls of Jericho that had not been thrown down at the blasts of trumpets. He had unearthed them. There they were. The Bible was wrong. Through years I have remembered the look of disgust on his face, as he stood on the hot 199 PARIS REBORN plain of the Jordan, running a handkerchief over his forehead, and shrugging his shoulders with de- spair at the stupidity of one whose faith could not be shaken. "You here in Paris !" he exclaimed. "Where are your Turkish friends'?" "You here in Paris !" I echoed. "Where are your Austrian friends'? I should think you had lived and dug with them long enough to have become Viennese by now." "For coffee's sake, I would be Viennese until death," he answered. "Not in Jericho, you under- stand, but on the Graben. But Paris is the old love, even if Marguery is dead, and Voisin's menu with- out prices is far more dangerous than it used to be. I was having some plates for my new book made here when the war broke out, and I have stopped on, waiting for a chance to do Red Cross field work. They don't seem to want me, in spite of my M.D., which I have resuscitated out of the past. So I am waiting, just as Paris is waiting. How long, and for what, I do not know." The Archaeologist had also in mind St. Germain- en-Laye. We spent half an hour wandering around Neuilly to find a taxi for the trip. Three chauffeurs would not go — at our terms. So we decided to do the inner fortifications on foot. Right at the Porte Maillot, before our eyes, we 200 PARIS PREPARES TO RECEIVE THE GERMANS saw the elaborate preparations that we found after- wards to be practically the same at other gates. I suppose the same work has been done at all the fifty-eight. The gate is closed and boarded up. Little holes for inspection and rifle barrels have been cut every few inches. Outside the gate ditches have been dug for a distance of a hundred feet zigzag across the road. In the intervening spaces rows of iron X spikes, whose presence is concealed by branches of trees, form another barrier. On the sides of the road trees, cut down whole, have been placed ready to be thrown across the road at the moment of alarm. In the mounds of dirt formed by the excavations from each trench and the displaced paving stones, posts have been planted. These are connected by a tangle of barbed wire. We walked along the fortifications through the Bois to the gate at the end of the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. The trees that had grown up in pro- fusion over the talus have been cut down. At every angle, bags of cement are piled up to shelter the pickets. On the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne we found a taxi that took us around the fortifications as far as the Porte d'Orleans. At the Porte d'Orleans several stone houses oppo- site the gate have been blown up to prevent their possible use as a shelter for the enemy's sharpshoot- ers and machine-guns. The little ticket office and 201 PARIS REBORN waiting-room for the Bourg-la-Reine steam tram- way, that used to stand hard under the bastion wall at the left of the gate, has been demolished. The windows of the octroi bureau are bricked up. Barbed wire is lavished on the water-main that makes an unintentional bridge across the moat not far from the Porte d'Orleans toward Gentilly, and a solid wall of masonry is being built where the main reaches the fortifications. Meurtrieres are being left in this wall. On either side of the gate itself, bags of cement give a crenelated form to the top of the talus. We walked around at will, poking our canes into the foliage that concealed the X spikes, discussing the efficiency of the cross-fire that could be directed from the top of the fortifications, and then followed the holiday crowd up to the very bags of cement be- hind which our soldiers are to shield themselves. A good-natured policeman shooed us away. We walked a hundred feet farther along, and climbed up behind the policeman's back. He was merely "keep- ing the crowd moving." When he went to one spot, the crowd was entering the forbidden zone at the place he had just abandoned. "Like all policemen the world over," I com- mented. "No," said the Archseologist. "Leave out Ger- many. Fancy if this were Berlin preparing for a 202 At the fortifications. A tangle of barbed wire PARIS PREPARES TO RECEIVE THE GERMANS siege. Do you suppose a couple of foreigners like you and me, and all this holiday crowd, would be al- lowed to inspect the defenses this way? If we per- sisted, after we had been warned off, we should find ourselves at the Hauptquartier and in a very un- pleasant pickle. A German crowd would know bet- ter than to try to climb up this slope to these de- fenses. It would never enter their heads!" "A quoi bon? A quoi bon?" a huge grandfather, who might have been a piano-mover in earlier days, was muttering near us. He hit the cement bags with his stick, and then turned his palms heavenward in an eloquent gesture of contempt. This is the Pari- sion way. Be skeptical, but never unpleasantly skep- tical. The grandfather was not scowling when he spoke. He was smiling. As he went away, he stooped to picked some dandelions. " Evidently," said the Archseologist, "the authori- ties are going to take no chances. They know as well as our citoyen there that these defenses have n't the ghost of a show against artillery, but they have studied to advantage what has been happening in Belgium, what probably is happening now in our own northern cities. These defenses are against automobiles blindes and Uhlans. A sudden dash through a city gate, a few soldiers once inside — what could the two millions of Paris do? If they killed the soldiers, the Germans would claim that the civil- 205 PARIS REBORN ian population had fired upon their troops. That would give them all the excuse they needed to bom- bard the city. I find the preparations very sensible. Lucky for Paris that she has these old fortifications." I agreed heartily with the Archaeologist. There is some good in these elaborate preparations at the gates of the city, and I see how, in a totally different way from their original intention, the deep moat and walls are a blessing to the city. For they make us secure against German trickery. Only two months ago I was writing an article in warm commendation of a scheme presented to the Municipal Council to do away with these obsolete fortifications in order that a boulevard encircling the city might be constructed in their place. "These ditches and stone walls are laughable," the Paris architects maintained. "They have absolutely no military value, and the space they take, together with the zone beyond them to which our military law for- bids the granting of free title, deprives Paris of hun- dreds of acres of valuable land. We shall tear down the walls and fill in the moat, and use the space for a boulevard and for cheap dwellings for working- men." "Amen !" all Paris cried. Some such simi- lar agitation among architects has been going on for years about the Eiffel Tower. But to-day we say, "God bless the old landmarks: they are still our bul- wark and our defense." 206 PARIS PREPARES TO RECEIVE THE GERMANS I mentioned the architects and the Eiffel Tower to the Archaeologist, and that put it into our heads to go over to the Trocadero to see if by any chance the Tauben would be resuming their evening visit at six o'clock. When we got there we saw that thousands of oth- ers had thought of the same thing. The quays on either side of the river, the Pont d'lena, and espe- cially the garden of the Trocadero, the best vantage point — everywhere Paris endimanchee was in evi- dence, Paris chattering and laughing, Paris search- ing the heavens. Enterprising boys, with opera glasses to rent, reaped a rich harvest. Half a dozen French aeroplanes were making circles around the Tower. We could not deceive ourselves into be- lieving that they might possibly be les Boches. We waited an hour, ever hopeful, ever watching for specks on the horizon that might grow larger until they took the form of shining Tauben. All around us were expressions of disgust. Up to the approach of dinner-hour and darkness, there was still the ardent hope, "Pourvu qu'ils viennent!" If they would only come ! This is how Bernhardi's policy of "frightfulness" has affected Paris. 207 XXII WAITING September eighth. I HAVE never seen the garden of the Luxem- bourg Palace so lovely as it is to-day. August was hot: so the cultivated wild flowers around the walls of the Palais du Senat are a riot of color. Fountains are playing, and gardeners are turning over the earth with their trowels and tenderly prun- ing rebel branches. I am sitting near the waffle-kiosk, trying to read between the lines of the niggardly news dished up to us in the morning papers. The wind is blowing from the east, and I fancy that I hear the rumble of distant cannon. The big battle is being fought out there twenty-five miles away to decide the destiny of the city. Is it not also the destiny of the world that is at stake? How beautiful, how inspiring, how soothing, is this brilliant revelation of nature, a few feet from those asphalted streets, canons of man's making, where trees seem exotic and the sky is doled out to 208 WAITING the city-bred in patches! It seems incredible, the distant coups de canon., punctuating the sentences as I read, and forming a sinister background to the merry cries of children rolling hoops, sailing boats and playing cache-cache. For the load of anxiety, the terrible dread never absent these days, does not prevent the mothers from bringing their children to play while the fathers are facing death out there in the distance where the cannon are booming. This is the patriotism that counts, the faith that enables our soldiers to hold the enemy in check to- day, that will enable them to conquer him to-mor- row. If these splendid mothers had taken their children and fled, if all Paris had followed the pam- pered, the idle, the empty-headed, the "despairers of the Republic" on the road to Marseilles, to Bor- deaux, to Havre, the city would be an empty shell, an anticipatory reproach to, and confession of lack of belief in, the armies that had not yet made the su- preme stand. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Here are the treasures, these wives, these children, these babies, who knit and play and babble. They are not afraid. The fathers are out there, and the grown sons are out there. The women hold the fort here. And, because there is knowledge that the fort is being held in perfect loyalty and trust, ordinary men, not soldiers by profession but citizens 209 PARIS REBORN of the state, are fighting like lions with a superhu- man strength to justify the faith of which they are the object. Can this fail to bring victory^ I hear the children playing soldiers. "Papa Jof- fre," they say. Papa JofTre — there is the secret of the absence of fear. The French army is part of the great family, the stronger part defending the weaker part. "Oncle French," they say. Uncle French — the British army are the parents, the cousins, helping to defend the family. A newspaper man tried to get me to go to Meaux this morning. But I have seen enough of carnage to be cured of curiosity, and enough of military op- erations to know that what I might hit upon by chance would give me no clue to the ensemble, and be of no benefit to me or to my readers. I am getting more light into the secret of the French resistance, and more boldness to prophesy success, in the Luxembourg than I would get in dodg- ing and trying to fool sentinels on the road to Meaux. September ninth^ 10 a. m. The news from the line of battle to-day is more encouraging than at any time since last Sunday. The allied armies seem to be not only holding their own, but driving back the Germans over the Marne. However, preparations are still being made for a 210 WAITING possible siege of the city. The number of the Ger- man forces is not unknown, and it may be that, in spite of their heroic efforts, the Allies will once more have to fall back before superior numbers. We received this evening the result of the census that has just been taken. Over two million people are still within the fortified camp of Paris, which includes the nearer suburbs. As the census of last year reported a population of nearly two million nine hundred thousand in the same area, this shows that some eight hundred thousand are away from their homes. The deficit of population is almost wholly due to the war. About half a million Paris- ians are generally out of the city during the sum- mer months, but this is offset largely by the refugees from Belgium and the invaded departments, and by the moving in of the inhabitants of the outer sub- urbs. If we take into consideration the fact that two hundred thousand Parisians have been mo- bilized, it is probable that not more than a hundred and fifty thousand fled from Paris.1 These are for the most part of the wealthy class, but there have also been many destitute working people, originally from the provinces, who have been repatriated by their regional associations. 1 1 found out subsequently that I had been wrong in my calcula- tions here. Over four hundred thousand left Paris between Au- gust soth and September 9th. 211 PARIS REBORN If the Germans besiege Paris, we have sufficient food supplies to last us for many months, before we need to take a census of the horses and dogs and cats and rats. I doubt if there is any city in the world more abundantly provisioned than is Paris to-day. Not only are the great warehouses filled to over- flowing with dry groceries and canned-goods, but the Government has taken special pains to see that there is fresh meat and fresh milk for invalids and child- ren. The Bois de Boulogne is full of cattle. The city has organized a brigade of dairy workers. Every invalid and baby in this great city has been registered. More than that, late summer and au- tumn vegetables are being planted in the vacant spaces within the line of the forts. We are beginning to have a gleam of hope to-day that the Germans will not be able to come, and that the cannonade from the direction of Meaux is all that we shall hear of actual fighting. Perhaps we are wrong! But we are prepared for the worst. September ninth, 10 p. m. Is it the thunder showers and the gloomy skies, or the sickening anxiety over the fate of our army in the battle that is still raging near Paris'? A sudden change has come over the soul of this great city. This morning it was sunshine and smiles : this even- ing it is the deepest sort of gloom. We see no more 212 WAITING soldiers. Even the few regiments which guarded the public buildings and the famous Garde Repub- licaine, pride of Paris, have disappeared.1 The distant cannonade seems to have ceased. But a nearer and louder boom tells us that they are dyna- miting the houses near the forts, and that the final arrangements are being made to receive the Germans, should they come. Should they come. There 's the rub ! It is not the fact of victory or defeat which wears, it is not the test of life or death, it is the un- certainty that wears upon Parisian nerves. "Give us some news — anything but the same old story of the Russians marching on Berlin, and the panic and high price of food in Vienna!" is the cry of Paris waiting. We do not know whether to hope or despair; but we want to do one or the other. There have been three ominous signs to-day, if we have to judge by signs. The public schools, which were reopened, have been closed again. The train service in all directions has been temporarily suspended "to allow the military government to keep in touch with the outer forts." The police have come to take a census of the provisions we have in store. The spirit is not worry. Paris is incapable of that 1 1 was mistaken here. The Garde Republicaine did not leave, and the 22d Infantry Regiment was still in the city. 213 PARIS REBORN sensation. Nor is it fear. The frightened have al- ready left. It might rather be called sulkiness, this spirit which makes so unnaturally for gloom. I say unnaturally, for gloom and Paris are words that do not go together. But what can we expect when the Government has run away and left us, when our best newspapers have gone to Bordeaux, when our streets are not lighted brilliantly of an evening, when we cannot sit down in front of a cafe for our after- dinner coffee"? No music or theaters since the war began, no open-air life, no drives in the Bois, no business, no money, no news, no more German aero- planes even to break the monotony ! One really feels now that there would be bitter disappointment and disgust if the Germans did not try after all to come to Paris. For we have suffered much inconvenience on account of them. To be without diversion is the acme of suffering for Paris. And, now that we have prepared our minds for an attack, and have made every preparation to give the Germans a warm reception at our forts, even at the inner obsolete fortifications, if it has been for noth- ing we shall feel like the hostess who prepares an elaborate meal and waits in vain for her guests. September tenth. I have never had the good fortune to come across charming ladies taking an afternoon sunbath under 214 WAITING birch trees on a grassy and flowered couch. But I know a man who has. Else how could he have put on canvas the contrasts of flesh and sunlight and shadow spots that have brought him fame, if not yet fortune*? I had heard that he was in town, and was going to see him this afternoon to talk things over. For he is interested in more than his paints and brushes, and I find his comments on Parisian character as keenly analytical as they are delightfully appreciative. On the Boulevard Raspail, at the corner of the Rue du Cherche Midi, they are building a new apartment house. The work has gone on steadily, day after day, through this week of crisis. There is a slender, graceful crane (can the French put up an ugly thing, even when it is a question of a utilitarian machine*?) whose mobile arm floats a hundred and fifty feet over the lot on which the building is rising. The huge stones are lifted from the ground and put in place as easily as I lift my baby to her high chair at the table. This operation never fails to fascinate passers-by. I always stop, for I am as interested in the budding stories of that apartment house as is the owner, perhaps more so. For I do not have to pay the bills, and I do not have to worry over whether the completed apartments will bring in the exorbi- tant rentals dreamed of, as the reward of courage in diverting money to a venture of faith that might 215 PARIS REBORN have been placed in the new issue of five per cent. Argentines, six per cent, waterworks-bonds of Seattle or Saskatchewan, or that attractive Peruvian rail- way, which offers the chance of drawing a gros lot of five hundred thousand francs. The work has stopped to-day — Thursday half holiday — but high up there on the crane in the little box where the levers are manipulated, I see a man planting a row of geraniums. The red flowers are outlining the edge of the wooden box against the sky. The Germans may have turned away at Meaux for good, or they may not. But the flowers must be planted. I suppose they were cheap at the market, and they are very pretty. A shell from a German "420" may bring down this crane next week; God only knows that. To-day the crane is there, and the workman will be happier for his flow- ers. He is a Parisian. The painter of siesta-taking ladies has gone to the Club. I shall see him there later. In the mean- time, I take a turn through the Bon Marche and through Sadla's near-by, at the corner of the boule- vard and the Rue de Sevres. These are reliable barometers of how Paris is feeling and going to feel. The aisles of the Bon Marche show plenty of buy- ers. At Sadla's, good things displayed in their usual profusions, dry groceries and canned goods, fresh meats and vegetables, fish and game, cheese and 216 WAITING pastry make me look at my watch to see if dinner hour is near. The barometers register fair weather. No storms for Paris. 217 XXIII AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE September twelfth. THE anxious week is over. I would be the last in the world to claim that it has not been an anxious week. The Paris that works, and that stuck bravely to its work, did not lose its grip. Nor did it lose its original tradi- tional lightheartedness. But the lightheartedness of Paris is not indicative of the feelings that lie beneath the surface. To be good-humored, to be cheerful, to be happy, is a habit. The Parisian is incapable of not smiling, of not feeling that the world is good and that there is, in spite of every reason to think otherwise, an overflowing joie de vivre. There has been reasonable ground for believing that the Germans might come to Paris, and that the defense of the city would have been impossible. We knew that von Kluck had passed through Compiegne, through Creil, and through Chantilly. Then we heard the cannon at Meaux. This was the first indication that something had 218 AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE gone wrong with the German raid, or that the plan of attacking Paris had been for the moment given up. Rumors were plentiful; news was scarce. What were the Germans up to? We could only make surmises : we knew nothing. Last night, at the Closerie des Lilas, I dined with the Lawyer and the Officer of Zouaves, who had been wounded at Charleroi and was impatiently waiting for the order to rejoin his regiment. The soup was excellent; the biftek aux fommes done to a turn and no more; the camembert just ready to overflow like the Seine after the melting of the spring snows in the uplands; and the pears and peaches — oh, what a summer this has been for fruit ! To be eating a meal like this, and the Germans only thirty kilometers away — it seemed incredible. But why borrow trouble*? Siege rations begin only when the siege comes. We have had more than enough these days, thanks to the frous sards whose sudden disappearance since the beginning of the month has resulted in a supply greater than the de- mand in the Halles Centrales. The Officer of Zouaves insisted upon showing his patriotism in a less convincing manner than he had done at Charleroi, if we could judge from the elo- quent testimony of his arm in splints and the huge pieces of court plaster sticking out from bandages which covered half his head. He raised glass after 219 PARIS REBORN glass to the health of General Joffre and the men who had ceased retreating and were making the stand on the Marne. "Why did von Kluck turn aside at Chantilly4? Why did he go to Meaux instead of coming in to St. Denis? He was afraid. He is a big bluff, like all the Germans. He doesn't know what he's doing! But Joffre knows, and he will save Paris, God bless him!" The Officer of Zouaves called once more for the g argon. The Lawyer has been my daily companion at the evening meal this past week. We have no longer our Temps: for the Temps, too, has gone to Bor- deaux. So newspapers in whose dispatches he and I have faith, are lacking. Consequently, there has been little for us to "go on" in talking of the cam- paign, and we have grown tired of disagreeing with each other. Now I saw the old gleam of combat come into the Lawyer's eyes. He raised his eyebrows, dilated the pupils of his eyes, and wrinkled his nose to readjust his eyeglasses. This is the habitual gesture that heralds a judicial announcement. "God bless General Joffre ! I say that too. And I believe that he has the situation in hand and knows what he is doing. He left Paris undefended be- cause he knew it ought not to be defended. But 220 AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE von Kluck was not afraid to come here. Nor was his march to Chantilly a bluff. He could not come, because there was that French and British army fall- ing back towards the southeast, standing much bet- ter between Paris and the Germans than if it had stupidly fallen back upon the forts of the city." "You are right," I commented. "General von Kluck could have come to Paris. He could be here with his army at this very minute, and we know well enough that nothing would have stopped him. As you say, General von Kluck knew that if he came, leaving General Joffre's army intact in the field, he would have been caught here like a rat in a trap." "That 's understood !" cried the Lawyer. "But, if it 's understood, what do you mean by saying he could have come*?" "I mean that the way to the city was open before him, and that no power could have prevented his entry here during this last week." The Lawyer eyed me with cold disgust. "That's the way you 've got it in your head, is it? You stand on the balcony of your apartment, and look down into the Boulevard du Montparnasse. You could jump off into the boulevard instead of going down the staircase. You could, all right, all right." The Officer of Zouaves, who claimed to have learned English once in Canada but had forgotten 221 PARIS REBORN all of it as far as I could ever find out, looked up with a gleam of intelligence. He knew the Law- yer's last words all right. "All right, all right!" he exclaimed. "Let us have another drink." Serious conversation was no longer possible. This afternoon, as the Lawyer and I always try to take a half holiday on Saturdays, we planned to go out of the city. Neither of us had been farther beyond the fortifications than the Bois de Boulogne since the war started. Firmly opposing for once the Lawyer's bachelor habit of keeping in a rut, I led the way to the Bois de Vincennes. "I am tired of the same old thing," I remonstrated. "We are not adventurous youths any longer, and I am not thinking of the battle-field. But at least we can take some suburban tramway to the end of the line, and we may get within hearing distance of the fighting. No, that has receded now — at least we shall be nearer things than sticking in the city." Outside the Porte de St. Mande, we found a train for Champigny that took us through the Bois de Vin- cennes. We passed acres of cattle pens. Thou- sands of cattle and thousands of bales of hay were in the Bois beyond the fort. If there were to be a siege, fresh milk and fresh meat had been provided for us by the military authorities. At Champigny, scene of the celebrated battle in 222 AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE the war of Soixante-Dix and of the annual pilgrim- age of Deroulede, we found the people just as un- interesting as they always are in these little towns on the outskirts of Greater Paris. When we crossed the bridge toward the railway station, we stopped to speak to the octroi man. We asked him about the fighting, concerning which infor- mation had been so meager in Paris. "Cannon heard here? Bien sur, very plainly, and only fifteen kilometers away. But that was six days ago. You ought to have come out last Sunday after- noon. We were just full of Parisians then, and the rear guard posts of our army were only three kilo- meters away. They were n't busy looking after the Germans, but after the Parisians. They had to turn them back to keep them from trying to walk out to- wards the battle. La-la, but that was a day ! Why didn't you come then"? We were expecting the Uhlans to walk in any minute, and this bridge on which you are standing would have gone up in smoke at the first alarm. But now the Germans have been pushed back over the Marne. They have had their chance, and could n't make a go of it. That I am sure of." We felt that the octroi man was right. Every slight indication that had come to us through the communiques during these days of tension pointed to a German reverse, to an irretrievable check. 223 PARIS REBORN At the railway station we inquired if there were a train back to Paris, and found to our delight that, while the suburban service was not running, an ex- press train from the direction of Compiegne was ex- pected after another hour. It was a cold, chilly afternoon, and we welcomed the thought of a hot drink at the cafe across from the station. There we sat, watching train after train of soldiers pass, and trucks loaded with can- non and mud-bespattered munition wagons. When the train stopped at the station, Red Cross girls and Boy Scouts gave the soldiers hot coffee and sand- wiches. The supply seemed unlimited. We felt victory in the air. Talk about telepathy ! The Lawyer and I were just bubbling over with hap- piness. So was every one round us. Something good had happened somewhere! While we waited, a train from Paris passing by dropped bundles of the afternoon papers with the three o'clock communique. Talk about your crazy, frenzied mobs. I had never been in anything like it since the Bowl-Rush of college days. To get a paper, I abandoned my change. My eyes sought the communique. Joy of joys! Like a madman I ran back to the terrace, where the Lawyer, wiser than I, had already bought a Liberte from a camelot that had not tried to sell to the crowd. // was Victory! 224 AFTER THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE The battle of the Marne was over. The Germans were in full retreat. Paris was saved ! We went home that night on a train that started from Montdidier. Most of the compartments were full of wounded soldiers, who had been able to escape from the battlefield near Noyon, and found this train for Paris. They had not yet heard the result of the engagement between the Maine and the Ourcq. In exchange for our news, they brought us the good word that the Germans had been checked also on the north, and had fallen back from Amiens. The battle was still raging less than two kilometers away from where this train started. There was no time-table. The train had started when it was filled. The stop at Champigny was from habit, luckily for us. At the Gare du Nord, our elation suddenly left us. We had been full of the joy of victory. Now we came face to face with its cost. In our compart- ment the soldiers were only slightly wounded, but from other compartments in the same train inanimate forms were being lifted. Doctors, nurses and order- lies were so few that the unfortunates had to be laid out upon the station platform to wait for attention. Baggage trucks were commandeered, for stretchers were lacking. The cries and moans that had been hushed by the movement of the train were now audi- ble. Many were in agony. Others must have come to the end of their sufferings while we, in the same PARIS REBORN train, were joyously laughing and talking of victory. Blankets, hastily pulled from knapsacks, covered those who had given their life from the profane gaze of those for whom the life had been given. We went to Kepler's in the Place de Clichy for dinner. The salons were filled. The victory of the Marne was being boisterously celebrated by the unfit who, not having had to suffer, were oblivious of suf- fering. All joy is born of pain. Why is it that those who experience the joy are not always those who have experienced the pain? 226 XXIV PARIS AT NOTRE DAME September thirteenth. THIS afternoon, at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris prayed for the welfare of France and for the soldiers engaged in the great battle which is still, despite the German retreat, raging near the gates of the capital. It has been a wonderful day in the history of France — the reconciliation of the Church and State after many years of bitter con- flict. Cardinal Amette, Archbishop of Paris, upon his return from the election of the new Pope, issued an appeal to the clergy and people of Paris "to as- semble in the Cathedral of Notre Dame on the after- noon of September thirteenth to pray for the safety of France." The result was far beyond expecta- tion. When I read the notice I said to myself that I must be sure to get there a full hour before the time set — three o'clock. But as all Paris seemed to be moving towards the cathedral, I cut short my lunch, and reached the Parvis a little after one. Never have I seen such a gathering. Worshipers coming 227 PARIS REBORN by the thousands blocked every street. The cathe- dral, beyond the sea of human heads, seemed very far away. It took me half an hour to work my way forward to the doors. Arriving at the iron fence, I found the gates closed. It did not need the assur- ances of the police on guard to tell me that there was no hope of entering. Inside the gates, under the porches, thousands were crowded. The three mas- sive doors were wide open. But those so near were yet as far away as myself. Long experience has taught me that when the front door is closed, there is always a side door, and, failing that, a back door. I had come to see the ceremony. It took twenty minutes to work my way back to the nearest breathing-space, by the statue of Charlemagne. Then I tried for the side door, lead- ing into the yard between the cathedral and the archeveche. This was worse than the front. In- stead of getting forward, I was gradually pushed sidewise, until I found myself seated on the parapet of the quay, looking down into the Seine, and wish- ing for a swim. The back door alone remained. Around by the side of the archbishop's residence is an iron gate — servants' entrance, I suppose. Here there were few people for the moment, and those that entered were priests of the city, who had been quietly given the tip. I got in among them, but, when I reached the gate, a policeman loomed up in front of 228 PARIS AT NOTRE DAME me— or rather, I loomed up in front of a policeman. For I am not small. "You," he said, in a tired voice, "are the seventy- fifth thousandth person who has, since noon, thought of this dodge and compelled me to be rude. Stand back, please, and let their reverences pass !" "Surely," I responded, "there ought to be a pre- mium for number seventy-five thousand and one. And it will relieve your tired feeling to pass me in — just for the sake of a change." "You are right," he exclaimed, letting fall the arm that barried the way. "Go in, but I warn you that, once inside, you are still far from the cathe- dral." A narrow stone staircase, leading from the court of the archeveche, is the entrance to the sacristy. Here, to my astonishment, among the priests jostling each other in an effort to enter, I saw several hun- dred other outsiders like myself. Making a passage for several nuns enabled me to get to the steps, where a soldier of the Twenty-second was standing guard. "I am sorry for every one here," he said to me. "I would let all in, but there is no room; the ca- thedral is full." "What a pity," I answered. "You are not in your first year in the Twenty-second, are you?" This question seemed to surprise him. For there 229 PARIS REBORN was a query in his voice when he admitted that his term of service was just about up. "It 's such a shame," I remarked, "that your regi- ment should not be at the front. I remember last year what a wonderful showing you made at Long- champs on the Quatorze. Is n't it tough that you have to be here keeping order in Paris'? Such a won- derful regiment as yours !" His face glowed with pride. "So you noticed our regiment then? We did do credit to ourselves in that review. If you wait, I '11 just step inside, and see if there is one more place." So I got into Notre Dame. From the sacristy door to the choir there was an open space, preserved with difficulty for the passage of the privileged ones admitted to the choir. Nat- urally, coming from the sacristy, I was privileged, was I not*? I reached a position not far from the altar, where I could look straight down through the choir and nave to the open doors. As far as the eye reached, up to the prefecture of police on the other side of the great square in front of the cathedral, the worshipers were massed. If ever Notre Dame held more people in all its centuries of history, either the cathedral was larger or men were smaller in other ages than in our own. On his throne sat Cardinal Amette in brilliant red robes. The stalls were filled with the clergy of 230 PARIS AT NOTRE DAME Paris. Hundreds of chairs, placed in the choir, were occupied by high officials of the government and the city, and by officers and soldiers of every branch of the service. Most of them had bandaged arms or heads. Only invalid soldiers had time to pray to- day. After the evening service had been sung, the great congregation was invited by the cardinal to sing the hymn, "Sauvez la France !" Far out into the place it was taken up by a hundred thousand throats. Priests and laymen were crying all around me. They were not ashamed of their tears. Nor was I of mine. There was something sublime in that cry, "Sauvez la France!" From the steps of the choir, standing on a high dai's erected for the occasion, Cardinal Amette preached a simple, earnest sermon. His theme was that no country could prosper without the blessing of God, and that the supplications of the faithful were absolutely necessary for the success of the armies in the field. He ended his peroration by lift- ing his arms, and crying, "God with us! Vive I'Eglise! Vive la France!" The cry was taken up, echoed and reechoed, and then the vast audience burst again spontaneously into the hymn, "God save France !" The relics and treasures of Notre Dame and of other historic churches of Paris were paraded down 231 PARIS REBORN the nave, out through the crowd on the place^ and back to the choir. Among them were many re- minders of the country's history and traditions, relics of King Clovis, St. Genevieve, and Jeanne d'Arc. They were carried by soldiers, and followed by a number of guilds with their banners. During the procession, the patron saints of the city and the na- tion were invoked. Like the soughing of pines came the responses, "Miserere nobis" and "Ora pro nobis.'" It was six o'clock before I got out into the open air. A victory was being cried by the newsboys. "The Germans retreat!" "General Joffre sends a message from the army!" But there was no exultation among the departing worshipers. For news of success could not brighten the faces of those who, during the hours of prayer, had been thinking of loved ones out on the battle- fields of the Marne. Before their eyes was not the victory, but the price that had been paid. How many were widows and orphans, but knew it not ! 232 XXV THE CAFE STRATEGISTS September seventeenth. VIOLENT newspaper attacks on "les embus- ques" as M. Clemenceau calls the hosts of seemingly able-bodied men who are not at the front, have made thousands of sincere patriots very uncom- fortable. It is true that you see constantly in the offices of the various ministries men of military age performing tasks that might possibly be left to those whom physical disability or age bars from the army. You see them in the police bureaus. You meet them in every post-office and at every railway station. Most bewildering of all, the streets are fuller of young men than under normal circumstances. I put to one side the soldiers in uniform conduct- ing automobiles for ladies travestying the Red Cross uniform. There are yellow dogs in every kennel. But, for practically all the men between twenty and thirty-five who do not wear the red trousers there is undoubtedly a good excuse. Few men in France are shirking, or want to shirk, their duty to-day. If 233 PARIS REBORN they have not gone to the front, it is from no lack of will on their part. Post-office and railway employees are retained against their will. They feel their position keenly. They beg in vain to be transferred from a desk-stool or a train to the battle line. They are told that the work they are doing for France could not be done by untrained men, and that they are aiding the na- tional defense as effectively as if they had rifles in their hands. They are given official brassards (arm- bands) to show the world that they also are serving the State. But when the invader is in France, a brassard is a poor substitute for a uniform to a young man with red blood in his veins. Then there are those who cannot show the bras- sards. If the streets are more alive with young men than in ordinary times, it is because work is scarce, and they have nothing to do. Should they stay at home'? Should they hide themselves because cir- cumstances beyond their control have kept them out of the army"? When one sees on the street a young man under thirty-five without uniform or brassard, it may be taken for granted that he is either a foreigner or physically unfit. The police drag net was out during the three weeks of mobilization. No man in Paris was able to escape challenge as to why he had failed to respond to the call to arms. Many a time I was 234 THE CAFE STRATEGISTS stopped, and asked to show my papers. There were gimlet eyes at every corner. It takes a time like this to make one realize how hard it is to detect physical unfitness. The tailor and the bootmaker do wonders to remove signs of deformity. Disabilities of heart, of lungs, of ear, and of eye are not generally noticeable. Often even the one impaired is not always himself aware of his disability until a physician has carefully looked him over. Foreigners are comparatively few. I fre- quently feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny of questioning eyes. It seems to me that they are ask- ing, "What in the world can be the matter with that man*?" The multitude of the rejected is a revela- tion of how many there are in the world who are not integer vitae. Those who are fit are blind to the fact that there are others less fortunate than them- selves, and never think of their own freedom from handicap as a boon to be thankful for. They ac- cept health as a matter of course. Let us pity the man not at the front — and learn the lesson of his being still in our midst ! But what about the man who is fit, who never felt better or stronger in his life, who never was in better shape, and who is not called to aid in the national defense merely because he happens to have cele- brated a certain number of birthdays? A man be- tween thirty-five and sixty, say the military authori- 235 PARIS REBORN ties, makes a fine officer. But they don't want any soldiers over forty! In the name of heaven, why^ It is a stupid notion, stupid because it is false. I know many a father who is the physical equal of his grown son. Even if he is n't, he has more sense, and that helps a lot in fighting. When the Germans drew nearer and nearer to Paris, and the reason given was that they had a larger army, a hundred thousand men in Paris an- swered, "If that be true, take us !" They began to volunteer, but were discouraged when they found that volunteering would mean being sent to a gar- rison town in the Midi. Perforce the fathers have to join the grandfathers in becoming cafe strategists. This is the distraction par excellence of Paris to-day. The official com- muniques are devoid of information. The people of Paris know absolutely nothing about the opera- tions whose end is to defend their city. When one has no news he invents it. When one is kept in the dark he makes light for himself. In a cafe where I usually dine, there is a large map on the wall. Gathered around several tables are some of the habitues. They have appointed themselves an extra-official "General Staff" of the French army. Pencils sketch on the marble table- tops what each considers should have been last week, and ought to be next week, the proper line of march. 236 THE CAFE STRATEGISTS After we have listened deferentially to the resume of General Joffre's errors of the previous day by the Veteran of 1870, who always has the first — and gen- erally the last — word, the discussion becomes elo- quent and heated. This evening I got a little tired of "If only Gen- eral Joffre had done this," "Now if only General JofTre would do this," and, "I wish General Joffre could realize how wise it would be to make this move." I retired for relief to my Figaro. My eye caught a citation from Livy. It was the speech Livy put into the mouth of Paulus ^Emilius, before his departure to take command of the Roman army for the campaign that ended in the victory of Pydna, 168 B. c. "In every gathering, and may the Gods pardon me, at every meal, one finds people who are deciding upon the march against Macedonia, who know in what places we ought to camp, what positions it is good for us to seize, at what moment and by what pass there is the best opportunity to penetrate the country, how we shall transport our provisions by land or by sea, the circumstances in which it is neces- sary to take the offensive, and those in which it is better to remain inactive. And, not only do they sketch the plan of campaign to follow, but of every- thing that has not been done according to their idea 237 PARIS REBORN they make a crime, accuse the Consul, and almost es- tablish themselves a court to judge him. "It is not that I pretend that the generals do not need advice, but this advice must be given by men who have some practice and knowledge of military affairs, who are on the spot, within reach of seeing the enemy and the opportunities, and who, so to speak, are embarked upon the same vessel and are sharing the same dangers. But if a man believes that the quiet and peace of the city are preferable to the fatigues of a war, let him not have the presump- tion to want to hold the rudder while he rests on the bank. "The life of the capital offers enough subject for conversation. Limit to this domain your gossip, and know that the advice which we receive from those in the camp is sufficient for us." Is there anything new under the sun4? 238 XXVI THE DESECRATION OF REIMS September twenty-first. WARM weather has come again after the cold snap of the past week, and the first morning thought, after rising from a comfortable bed, must be to others, as it is to me, a feeling of thankfulness that our soldiers in the trenches will have better days. I stepped out on the balcony, and looked over Paris just waking to the day's work. The mist was rising, and the sun fell full upon the white basilica of Sacre Cceur. Paris was at my feet, from the dome of Val-de-Grace to the Eiffel Tower and the Great Wheel. How happy my family will be when they come back from Finistere next week, and see how well I have fared in hunting for a new apartment ! When I went downstairs I was thinking of the difference it makes in life to have one's loved ones around one. The anticipation of reunion almost compensates for months of separation. We know things in this life only by contrast. As the black- board is needed to make visible the chalk, so pain is needed to make sensible joy. 239 PARIS REBORN The face of my concierge brought me rudely back to earth. "What is it*?" I exclaimed. "Surely there is not bad news of your boy?" "Have you seen the paper, Monsieur1?" he asked, with tears in his voice. Or was it rage 9 He disap- peared without enlightening me. I hurried to my newsdealer. Some event has af- fected my concierge more deeply than the report of battles lost and thousands slaughtered. The newspapers are not allowed these days to dis- play a headline more than two columns in width. So they cannot feature out of the day's harvest one item that the eye catches with a glance. There is much the same story in the paper this morning, the usual Russian and Servian victories and the Germans at bay in their entrenchments on the Aisne. In the official communique, however, I notice that the Ger- mans had destroyed the Cathedral of Reims by bom- bardment. This is, of course, a shock to me; but I look still further for the cause of the concierge's agitation. No, the military situation seems good on the whole, and no new developments stand out in the day's news. It must be the desecration of Reims. And then I remembered the attitude of a peasant who had come to Paris from the neighborhood of Senlis at the time of von Kluck's march three weeks 240 THE DESECRATION OF REIMS ago. He heard the news of the destruction of his home and his corps with indifference, but when he was assured that none of the historic monuments of the town itself had been injured, his face lit up with joy. "Thank God, thank God, thank God!" I wondered what there was to thank God about in the recital of the calamities that had fallen upon him. This wonder found expression in words. He an- swered simply, "God has not allowed the barbarians to harm our Cathedral." Only one who has lived in the Old World can re- alize the Old World's affection for monuments of the past. I have never had this more strikingly im- pressed upon me than to-day. Often the affection is local, for the monument is local. But the Ca- thedral of Reims has around it the historical mem- ories and religious affections of the French nation. The Cathedral of Reims was built to commemorate the spot where, through St. Remy, the Franks re- ceived the Christian faith. Here the kings of France were crowned from the time of Clovis. Jeanne d'Arc made it a matter of vital importance that the French army undertake the journey to Reims across country held by the enemy in order that Charles VII might be made king of the nation by sanction and unction. The Germans have destroyed the Cathedral of Reims, in spite of the fact that one of their princi- 241 PARIS REBORN pal newspapers, fearing this vandalism, pleaded against it. The Frankfurter Zeitung, on September 8, declared: "Let us respect the French cathedrals, especially that of Reims, which is one of the most beautiful churches of the entire world. Since the Middle Ages it is particularly dear to the Germans. For the master von Bamberg gained from the statues of its doors the inspiration of several of his figures. The cathedrals of Laon, Rouen, Amiens, and Beauvais are also masterpieces of Gothic art. All these cities are at this hour occupied by the Germans. We shall regard with veneration these superb churches, and shall respect them as our fathers did in 1870." Just three months ago, the Artist and I were in Reims. We had drifted in from Dormans over the narrow-gauge railway on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning was flooded with sunshine, and there was in the air the smell that the earthworm loves. It was one of those days when you prefer the preaching of Dr. Greenfields to that of any city par- son. But our train for the valley of the Ourcq did not leave till after lunch, so we wandered to the cathedral. I urged a plate of the front of the ca- thedral. The Artist demurred. "Reims is so overdone," he said, but not with finality. For already his eyes were half-shut, and his head bent slightly to the left. I knew what that 242 THE DESECRATION OF REIMS meant. He had discovered something attractive in the scaffolding erected for the refection of the left- hand tower. And scaffolding goes well in copper- plate etching. I knew he was good for two hours at the least, just as good as if actually fettered to the spot where he stood. So I went inside the ca- thedral. It was the Sunday after Fete-Dieu, and high mass was being celebrated in all the grandeur of the grandest church of France. Amidst the fragrance of the flowers and the soft light from the old win- dows, reflected upon those tapestries that were of the rarest treasures this world possessed, I listened to Cardinal Lugon plead against the dangers of pros- perity. Was that only three months ago? That splendid pageant, that picture of ecclesiastical dignity, of the Christian spirit in the hearts of men, that venerable figure clothed in purple ! What a change ! It was an old man this morning, just returned from the con- clave in which the new Pope was elected, and de- tained in Paris by the interruption of railway com- munications, who sat with bowed head, nervously clutching at his sleeve and buttoning and unbutton- ing the front of his cassock. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and the words came amidst convulsive sobs: "I have just come back from Rome. I have not been able yet to get to my diocese. I knew already 243 PARIS REBORN that the venerable church of St. Remy had suffered much, but I hoped that the destruction of the ca- thedral, cradle of Christian France, bound up with so many souvenirs of our national history, would be a burden of woe and anguish spared to my white hairs." There were no words of comfort that could be said to a broken-hearted man. "To God will be the retribution : in His hands are the scales of justice," were the phrases he muttered over and over again. "I must go home, if I can. But would to God I did not have to see Reims !" Are we in the twentieth century? Is German Kultur only a veneer of civilization1? Louvain was bad enough, but it did not strike the heart of France. Parisians feel to-day just as Americans would feel if an enemy should come and burn down the Phila- delphia State House and throw the Liberty Bell into the Delaware River. The breach between France and Germany is now too wide to be healed. Much could have been forgiven, or at least forgotten. What happened in Reims on Saturday and Sunday has made a gulf that cannot be bridged over, even to the third and fourth generation. September twenty-third. In my appreciation two days ago of the feeling of the French in regard to the destruction of Reims 244 Reims Cathedral This plate is probably the last etching of Reims Cathedral made directly on the copper from the subject. It was drawn in Reims shortly before the bombardment THE DESECRATION OF REIMS Cathedral, I understated its significance, even though what I said was rather sweeping. With every hour indignation, or rather the wild rage of anger, has grown. Ever since the beginning of the war one has had reason to believe that the Germans have no appre- ciation whatever of "psychological effects." They have thought that the exhibition of brute force, of vandalism, and heartless repression would terrorize non-combatants, paralyze the activity of the French army, and make the city of Paris willing to surren- der. In order to bring about this effect, they have not hesitated to incur universal condemnation of their actions. But they reveal a woeful lack of un- derstanding of human nature, of Gallic nature par- ticularly. For the more barbarous they have shown themselves, the more they have inspired the French to resistance. Take the cathedral at Reims. It was probably destroyed in order to give the Parisians an example of what they may expect if the Germans are success- ful in the present battle and come again to attack Paris.1 The cathedral stood in a position where it 1 It was not until some days later that we learned that the cathe- dral had not been wholly destroyed. From photographs it appears that the destruction was only partial, and not, perhaps, irreparable. The tapestries, too, whose loss I have inferred, were removed to a place of safety. Nor, when I wrote this, did I have before me the German justification for having turned their cannon on the cathe- 247 PARIS REBORN could be seen for twenty-five to thirty miles from the south and west. It has been a landmark on the horizon for the French armies since they started the present battle along the line from the frontier to Compiegne. As long as the cathedral was intact, the instinct of a chivalrous race rendered unwilling homage to the intention of the Germans to respect their most precious treasure. The moment the ca- thedral disappeared in flames and smoke, the Ger- mans gave to the French army an incentive, an in- spiration, an impulse to fight, far more valuable than the reinforcements of a quarter of a million of fresh troops. The Germans have thought to strike terror and dismay. Instead of that, they have aroused a spirit of determination, that cannot fail to bring about their defeat. If the destruction of the cathedral at Reims is a token of what we may expect at Paris, every Frenchman on the battle line, having this warning, says to himself that it is only over the bodies of a million dead men that the German cannon will now get within range of Notre Dame. dral. But I do not revise what I have written, nor presume to pass judgment on the bombardment as an impartial writer with the facts to guide him. These letters are merely an impression of Paris from day to day as things looked at the time of writing. 248 XXVII "ON DIT" September twenty-second. IN war time (is it any different in time of peace*?) there is nothing more astonishing than what "they say." When news is suppressed, rumor nat- urally takes the place of fact. This frequently brings serious consequences. We have already seen that in Paris. But there are many rumors that grow alongside of fact to embellish it, even when there is no suppression of news; and while some stories are evolved from a kernel of truth, others are manufac- tured out of the whole cloth. From the very first days of the war, I have been reading in the newspapers and hearing by word of mouth stories of German atrocities in Belgium. Un- doubtedly many of them are true. No man can play at war. Killing awakens evil passions. Men become brutes. I have had the opportunity of ob- serving how the sight of blood awakens sexual pas- sions. I have seen men of naturally good instincts transformed into devils. As the appetite grows in eating, so the madness of destruction gets the better 249 PARIS REBORN of those who destroy. Destruction may begin for a reasonable and definite purpose. It generally ends in wantonness. It is a curious fact, however, that practically every story of German cruelty and destruction I have heard before. During the wars of the Balkan penin- sula, "they said" the same stories. I mean the stories in their exact form, just as they are being retailed to us here in Paris! There are the boys whose hands are cut off in order that they may not, when grown to manhood, bear arms against the con- queror; the little fellow playing "sodjers" with a toy gun shot because he was taken "with arms in his hands"; the men crucified at the cross-roads; the women shot as they were kneeling in prayer; the father struck down when holding his child, and the sword killing both with the same blow; the baby thrown in the air and caught on the point of the bayonets; the woman and children forced to march in front of advancing columns to stay the fire' of husbands and fathers in the ranks of the enemy. I refrain from mentioning other stories far more hor- rible than these. Like jokes, they can be traced back. Frenchmen can read some of them in Victor Hugo's Histoire d'un Crime, in the lurid and scath- ing account of the actions of French soldiers in Paris at the time of the coup d'etat that placed Napoleon III in power. But Victor Hugo is modern. We can 250 "ON BIT" pursue our research with success back to Herodotus and Livy. I do not mean to express my belief that these stories are untrue. Only, it is human nature repeat- ing itself and not German nature. If true, they are the exception. But "on dit" transforms acts of van- dalism and barbarism into common practice. I have often wondered during these past weeks if, after all, the only truth is that "all men are liars" ! Are we victims of hallucination, are we easily self- deceived, or do we deliberately state what we know is not true, and come finally to believe what we say by frequency of statement? Is our sincerity a mat- ter of practice, and does exoneration come through habit? I have noted, "just for fun," the occasions during the past few weeks in which women engaged now in Red Cross work, — women for whom I have the high- est regard — have taken me aside and told me con- fidentially of the "horrible thing that has happened in our hospital." They have a wounded Turco. He came to them with a package from which he re- fused to be separated. They opened it — for obvious reasons — and found the head of a German. The fair dame vouches absolutely for the authenticity of the story. I have recorded seven different hospitals where the same thing has happened in exactly the same way. Generally this story is coupled with an- 251 PARIS REBORN other to the effect that "we cannot have any more German wounded in our hospital, for the Turcos get up in the night and strangle them." I first heard this story told about a Bulgarian soldier in a hospital at Sofia: the graphic details were the same. But you never meet the actual eye-witness. The story always comes at second hand. Another kind of "they say" stories, passing from mouth to mouth with wonderful rapidity, is the "inside track" news. One never knows where it comes from, but it seems to get everywhere. One person says, "Have you heard . . . *?" and the other person, "Yes, and have you heard . . . *?" Here are some of the examples of the stories that were told me with perfect gravity by men in responsible official positions in Paris. I heard them all within two hours, when I was taking my daily "constitutional" at the end of a late August afternoon. It seems that "they were saying" that President Poincare and the Cabinet had already moved to Bor- deaux; that the Bank of France had taken all its money to Havre where ships under steam were ready at a moment's notice to transport it to England; that there were five hundred alive out of a hundred thousand British troops; that the French army was practically annihilated; that the German army would be at Versailles that very evening; that at Compiegne the French drenched the trees with petrol, set the 252 "ON DIT" whole forest on fire and burned alive a division of the Germans ; that thousands of Germans have been killed by the new French bomb which on exploding lets out a gas that asphyxiates every one within a hundred yards of it; that on the way to Bordeaux the Cabinet, in session in a special train, decided to give up the city without a struggle ; that the Eiffel Tower was mined at its four corners and would be blown up before the Germans entered the city ; that the sup- plies of petroleum and gasolene which the Govern- ment could not carry away from Paris had been dumped into the Seine. So it went ! Around the most unlikely stories of the "whole cloth" variety grow with the telling all the earmarks of truth. This is most strikingly illustrated by the universal belief in Paris of the coming of the Cos- sacks. From my concierge, from the femme de menage who comes every morning to look after my office, from the friends I meet in the street or res- taurant, from the clerk at the Embassy who has "in- side official information, but you must not quote the source," even from the army officer on the General Staff, you have the positive assertion of fact. The Government is suffering from the mistaken policy of having magnified victories and suppressed the news of reverses. The policy of silence, if adopted, should work both ways. As it has just as bad an effect upon the public to raise their hopes as 253 PARIS REBORN to cause them anxiety, good news presents the same difficulty as bad news, especially when there is some of both to give out. A great deal of the unrest in Paris during "the week" was due to the lack of wisdom of the news- papers. From the very beginning of the struggle, we had heard that the Germans were fighting with- out any spirit whatever, that their officers were driv- ing them into battle at the point of the sword, that their infantry marched poorly, that their artillery fire was wild and that their cavalry was absolutely lacking in the qualities which had been claimed for it. The news of the Berlin press agencies has been pilloried to show how the Germans are carrying on a campaign of lies to convince the outside world that they are winning. All the while, the facts seem to controvert these reiterated statements of our press. The forts of Liege were not still holding out ; Namur was taken ; the Germans occupied Brussels sans coup ferir; and they passed their immense army into France while we were reading that "their game was already up" ! If it is true that neither their infantry nor their artillery nor their cavalry can be compared for a minute with that of the French and that their soldiers are fighting without any spirit whatever, how is it that the Germans have been able to penetrate large portions of northern France and have come near 254 "ON BIT" Paris itself? If it is true that they do not know how to use aeroplanes — and this is one of the most frequently reiterated statements of the press — why did we have the daily visits over the city of Paris? I am merely reporting here the questions which the Parisians, after reading their newspapers, have asked themselves. It was pretty cold comfort to pick up your paper in the morning and find abso- lutely no word about the military movements in France, but long enthusiastic articles telling how the Russians were advancing on Berlin. As the Germans marched through Belgium and France towards Paris, we were fed daily with this story of the Russian advance on Berlin and with the wonderful things the Russian army was accomplish- ing. The newspapers continue to publish telegrams from their Petrograd correspondents about the colos- sal numbers of troops that Russia has called into the field. The most reliable papers in Paris state for the comfort of their readers that Russia has six mil- lion men under arms, that four million reservists are assembling in their provinces, and that another two million are coming from Siberia and Central Asia. These hordes are expected very soon to fall upon Germany. When one considers that railways are few and that money is not very plentiful, the putting of an army of ten to twelve million men into the field seems 255 PARIS REBORN an impossible undertaking. Where could Russia find ten million modern rifles'? Any one who knows Russia and has become acquainted with Russian ad- ministration and the intellectual condition of the country sees the absurdity of figuring on an army of this size. A good army must have an officer for every ten men. If all the educated men in Russia of military age were at the front, the Russians could not officer efficiently an army of more than four millions. Even on a peace footing, Russia has always had ex- treme difficulty adequately to officer her army. The absence of a great educated middle class is the ex- planation of this. It is extremely doubtful if there are more than two million Russians in the field, and if, when the mobilization is complete, Russia can muster more than three million men fit for offensive warfare against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Some of her best regiments must be kept in Central Asia, and the attitude of Turkey does not allow her to draw from her standing army in the Caucasus. I suppose it was because the Russians have in popu- lar imagination so many more soldiers than they need to face both Germany and Austria, that the story of the Russian Cossacks cooperating on the bat- tle-fields of France and Belgium has been able to gain ground. For the past month I have been hearing most cir- 256 "ON BIT" cumstantial statements concerning the arrival of these Cossacks. There are not less than fifty thou- sand of them, each with his horse from the Tartar Steppes, who had already arrived. They had ac- tually been seen disembarking at Aberdeen. "An Oxford professor," "my mother-in-law," "my uncle's sister by marriage," "a traveling salesman who is the husband of my sister's old friend at the convent school," are the authorities for this statement. There have been letters received, even telegrams, confirming the transportation of these Cossacks across England. Travelers have seen them landing at Ostend, Dunkirk, Boulogne, Rouen, St. Malo, and Brest. Seventy-five trainloads passed through Rouen, holding up the traffic for hours. A British officer on the Avenue de POpera was heard to tell that they were encamped near Versailles. Wounded soldiers, coming from the front, and refugees have described minutely — and variously ! — how they were clothed. They wore beaver busbies, copper helmets, and brilliant red fezes. The most narrow question- ing could not shake the faith of those who told these stories. My informants have been as sure that the Cossacks had come as that the sun would rise to- morrow morning. So persistent have been these rumors, in England as well as here, that the British Official Press Bureau has found it necessary to deny them. 257 PARIS REBORN Last night I had a copy of the London newspaper containing the sweeping denial that any Cossacks had been landed in England, Scotland, France, or Belgium. "No Cossacks have come : no Russians of any branch of the army are expected," reads the of- ficial statement. At dinner I showed this newspaper to a friend of mine, a captain in the Ninth Zouaves, who is re- cuperating from wounds received at Charleroi. I read the official denial to him. He shook his head. "Of course," he explained, "they say that because they do not want the Germans to know. But a friend of mine came yesterday from Chantilly, and he said that the station master told him that — " And so the belief remains. They will have the Cossacks here. Next it will be the Japanese ! 258 XXVIII A CITY SUFFERING September twenty-third. THE hardships of American tourists and their disappointment over the spoiled summer vaca- tion, their worry over lost trunks and uncashed checks, their wrath over missed steamship passages, are no longer even a memory — except for them- selves. When one thinks of the million in Paris to-day without work, without men folks, who face starvation with a smile and with the heroism of those who know that they can give something else than their blood on the battle-field to sustain their coun- try in the hour of need, there comes the realization of the difference between real trouble and petty dis- comfort, of how the former brings out a nobility of soul in welcome contrast to the meanness produced by the latter. Now that Paris is beginning to become accustomed to the state of war, and has passed through the crisis of a German attack, the economic effect of the war is being felt more keenly. Excitement and uncertainty of the immediate future no longer pre- 259 PARIS REBORN vent us from giving first thought to what is in the larder — and what is not there! Contrary to the general impression that seems to be voiced by the American newspapers, the war has not as yet caused any increase in the price of food- stuffs. Prices are virtually as they were before the war started. There is a splendid supply upon the market of every kind of comestible that Paris is accustomed to have under normal conditions. I have noticed no difference either of price or variety in restaurant menus. The public services in the city have not been seriously disarranged since the first days of mobilization.1 The problem is not, then, one of food, of means of transportation, of light and heat. If is the prob- lem of getting the money to pay for these things. The mobilization has taken to the front so many men from Paris, and the money stringency has re- duced so greatly the number of buyers, that retail houses, if not closed entirely, can offer no employ- ment to those who are seeking places. In whole- sale business and in manufacturing, lack of credit, of railway transportation, and of raw material has compelled almost every firm to close its doors. So a great part of the population of the city finds itself out of work. 1 Except the motor-busses, which were commandeered for army service on the first day of the mobilization. 260 A CITY SUFFERING The Government is giving, for wives and chil- dren of soldiers, and for mothers where they can prove that they are dependent upon their sons, a daily sum just sufficient to keep body and soul to- gether. But there are hundreds of thousands of people in Paris who cannot claim this aid. Boys under military age, men over military age, or who, for some physical defect, have been rejected for army service, women and girls who have been wage earners, can earn little or nothing. There are few organizations to which they can apply for relief. Winter is coming. Who sees any immediate pros- pect of the ordinary economic life of the nation be- ing resumed? Were it not for the fact that virtually every wage earner in France has "something in the stock- ing," their plight to-day would be pitful beyond words. But these savings, put aside to buy interest- bearing investments, will not, among the poor, last very long. What is to be done then4? The Government has already taken into considera- tion the question of rents. No one can be dispos- sessed for non-payment of rent until January.1 All you have to do is to go before a Justice of the Peace, and declare that you cannot pay the rent. 1 This moratorium, limited to modest rentals, has since been pro- longed indefinitely, and widened in scope to include places of busi- ness whose annual rental does not exceed 2500 francs. 26l PARIS REBORN Ninety days of grace are given, beginning October first. But rent is always an important item of ex- pense with the working man in the city. He de- pends upon his daily earnings to meet this dreaded quarterly obligation. Those who are without work now, and who find it difficult even to get food to put in their mouths, can regard the moratorium for rents only as a measure which puts off the evil day. The wage earners who are in the army and who are earning nothing will be confronted with this prob- lem of paying arrears of rent when they come home. We are just beginning to see the horror of the economic disorganization caused by war. In a coun- try where there is universal military service, each week makes matters worse. So, in the opinion of the thinking men in France, the work of providing for the resumption of indus- trial life, with the receding of the wave of invasion, is equal in importance to that of national defense. Steps must soon be taken by the Government to en- courage, and, if necessary, to force, the return of normal economic conditions through the reopening of factories and of business houses, upon which the great bulk of the city population depends for its daily bread. This uneasiness concerning the future is begin- ning to be felt. It is reassuring to know that the German armies are retreating. It is equally reas- 262 The markets are full of food-stuffs A CITY SUFFERING suring to be told every day that the markets are full of foodstuffs. But the anxiety caused by the war becomes daily keener in most homes of the na- tion. It is hard to give your men to the army, and not to know whether they are alive or dead. But when the additional burden is placed upon them of getting bread to put in their children's mouths, we can realize what the war means to the women of France. September twenty- fourth. For nine days the greatest battle in history has been raging between the Aisne and Oise in the midst of the equinoctial storms. There is no great anxiety in Paris about the outcome of this battle, upon which depends the fate of the city. It is felt that the crucial moment has passed, and that the star of Ger- man militarism is on the wane. No matter what the Germans may succeed in do- ing on the Aisne, they are, and will be, in spite of any temporary successes, upon the defensive from now on in France. The legend of the invincibility of the Germans was destroyed in the battle of the Marne. Having once seen the Imperial Eagles in retreat, the French soldiers know that the trick is possible, and are confident that they can repeat it. But, in spite of the confidence, there is no ex- ultation here. Rather we are in the midst of an 265 PARIS REBORN anguish and sorrow more poignant than any that has yet been felt during this unhappy war. For it is now known that the battle of the Marne was won only at stupendous sacrifice of life, and we realize that every kilometer gained along the Aisne means a hecatomb of the youth of France. The modern engines of war, while they have not been able to stop the assaults of armies one upon the other, have proved themselves far more destructive than any- thing that has yet been seen in the history of the world. The French do not attempt to calculate their losses. They gave that up some time ago. How many are killed we do not know. We cannot even guess. October tenth. Here we are well into October, with the military situation very favorable, and the confidence of the people in the success of our arms greatly increased during the past two weeks. And yet, Paris is still dull. Business is still para- lyzed. It shows more than ever as winter ap- proaches. In the summer time, you rather expect things to be dull: but to go down the Avenue de 1'Opera, in the middle of an October afternoon, and to meet neither automobiles nor horsedrawn vehicles in the whole length of the street seems incredible. 266 A CITY SUFFERING Many establishments have announced their reopen- ing, but few of them have done so. We still have to admit that there is little prospect of things "pick- ing up in the near future." Paris is so much the city of pleasure and amuse- ment, where the light side of life is shown every- where, that the closing of cafes and the absence of theaters and music halls deprives the city of its nor- mal aspect. A number of attempts have been made to reopen the theaters, but without success. Were it not for the cinematograph, we should have no form of diversion. Since the beginning of the war, I have not heard a single band. One does not play the piano. There are two reasons for this stagnation of af- fairs, now that it can no longer be laid to the door of the German invasion and the lack of confidence in the success of the armies. In the first place, our dullness is the dullness of death. The slaughter of the battles has been so fearful that no one has the heart, even though the Parisian nature cries out for it, to be merry. If it seems a sacrilege to play the piano, what would it be to go to the theater*? When there is not a single family in this great city, which has not one of its members killed or wounded, when our armies are still in the field exposed to terrible dangers, is this to be marveled at*? The Frenchman cannot help ef- 267 PARIS REBORN fervescence of spirits. He laughs through his tears.1 There is no glumness in Paris. You do not feel the weighing down of a great sorrow. But there is silence, and it is a silence that all the world respects. Never a day passes without numerous funerals of soldiers. And yet, for every one that is buried here with his family following him, a thou- sand have been thrown hastily into trenches or left to rot upon the fields. The second reason is that people have no money to spend, or, if they have, do not enjoy spending it. The war has brought about such overwhelming disaster to the majority of the people that their money is sufficient only for the barest necessities. In the midst of this financial stress, those who have oney feel a delicacy in spending as they do in ordinary times. One does not want to flaunt luxu- ries in the face of so great misery. As Paris is the city -par excellence for luxuries, it is natural, then, that this cessation of buying has paralyzed almost every industry. Some of the palatial cafes have closed their doors because the people will not buy highly priced dishes and highly priced wines, and they cannot afford to keep open on the basis of serving simpler fare. This 1 Very shortly after this was written, music-halls and theaters began to reopen timidly with programs censored by the Military Governor, and the order to close promptly at eleven o'clock. 268 A CITY SUFFERING same thing is true of the shops which, under normal conditions, do a thriving business in the sale of wearing apparel and articles of luxury. It is noticeable already that the styles for the coming winter are going to be very simple. The milliners from whom ordinarily one could not buy a hat for less than two hundred and fifty francs, are of- fering their creations for sale at one-fifth of that price. The dressmakers who have kept open are selling the simplest kind of gowns for little money. One does not see in the streets beautifully appointed automobiles with handsomely gowned women. The wealthy woman of yesterday is the modest bour- geoise of to-day, riding in a horse cab, and wearing clothes that at the most could be bought for five hundred francs from hat to shoes. The commission for the reopening of industries is doing its best to bring about the return of normal life. The railroads are beginning now to transport fuel, merchandise and raw materials to make this possible. I have heard of several large factories lately which have notified their workmen to return the middle of October. Athletic organizations of Paris are encouraged to resume their outdoor sports this autumn. The Min- ister of the Interior has declared that it is a sign of patriotism to play football and tennis, and that everything that can be done by the athletic clubs to 269 PARIS REBORN resume their activities will help towards reestablish- ing the spirit of normality so rudely interrupted at the beginning of August. As the tide of battle rolls away from Paris, back into Belgium and towards the Rhine, this great city is bound to resume its usual life. Far from being hurt by the war, Paris will be benefited. We all look to see Paris enter upon a period of tremendous prosperity, not only in business, but also as a center of study. Victory in this war will increase the pres- tige of the French, and will make Paris more than ever the Mecca for students in every field of human knowledge and from every corner of the globe. October fifteenth. At last prices are beginning to show the effect of the war. During August and September fresh food products, such as vegetables and fruits, were cheaper in Paris than at any time during the past five years. The reason for this was that so many people had left the city, especially of the classes which buy in large amounts, that the consumers were fewer than the products put upon the market. After the mobilization was over, transportation facilities for victualing Paris were restored to the normal schedule. Even in the matter of milk, the supply has been ample and the price stationary. But now the general market is beginning to feel 270 A CITY SUFFERING the protracted abnormal conditions, resulting not only from a state of war, but more particularly from the presence of the German army for so long a time in the north and northeast of France. Since the last week of August, the Germans have held firmly the angle from the Belgian frontier, to Compiegne, to the German frontier. They are still within fifty miles of the capital, and dominate the railways of northern and northeastern France. After the Battle of the Marne, it was fondly hoped that the Germans would be driven out of France, or at least away from the immediate vicinity of the capital. But the fall of Maubeuge, followed now by the occupation of Lille, has given the Ger- mans as strong a position in northern France as they have in Belgium by their occupation of Liege, Na- mur and Antwerp. In the past week, they seem to have been able to extend the battle front by the way of the English Channel. The winter will open very inopportunely for France, if the Germans actually control all the coast line from Antwerp to Calais. Food supplies, of course, can reach the city with- out interruption from the west and south. Even if prices are a little higher, a serious deficit of food supplies except salt and sugar is not to be feared. But it is a different matter in regard to fuel. Lately it has been virtually impossible to buy coal or wood. I have had to wait eight to ten days after 271 PARIS REBORN giving in my order to get even a small quantity of wood. My coal has not yet come. The burden, as usual, will be borne by the poor. A slight increase in the price of food means to them the difference between being able to get along and starving. As for fuel, those who can afford to buy only in small quantities bear far more than their share of the loss and the difficulty in getting coal, coke, charcoal and wood for cooking and for keep- ing themselves warm. Only an overwhelming victory of the allied armies within the next month can prevent a winter of ex- treme deprivation and suffering in Paris. October twenty-second. In every great city, there is a large class of people, unskilled laborers, who live from hand to mouth, and who are always on the verge of poverty. They know how to manage on little, and, when the mis- fortune of illness or of unemployment strikes them, how to find aid to tide them over the evil days. Every one knows people of this sort who are always at the very end of their resources. But they never starve. They manage to get sufficient for them- selves and for their families — just how is a mystery, and they don't explain. This class does not find itself at the present moment in a situation different from that with which it has coped for years. The 272 The Quai aux Fleurs. As the tide of battle rolls away from Paris, this great city resumes its usual life A CITY SUFFERING war, in fact, has made means of subsistence more plentiful for them ! But the people who are to be pitied are those who have never before known what it is to be actually "up against it." They are skilled laborers, or peo- ple of the middle classes whose business affairs have always brought them in sufficient for their needs dur- ing times of peace. When they found them- selves suddenly left without employment and with- out money by the outbreak of the war, they were able at first to get along by using the money they happened to have in hand. But now no money is coming in, and, even if they have savings, the moratorium prevents their drawing money from the bank. There is no market for the sale of bonds or securities they may happen to possess. Banks are not lending money. I have met many people with comfortable homes, well dressed and prosperous looking, who are absolutely without means. In talking the other day with the wife of one of the successful art photographers of Paris, I discov- ered by accident that all the money she had in the world was two francs. She had recently adopted a baby, and now has nothing for feeding it. Refus- ing to beg, she had been living by selling at absurd prices things in her apartment. She went one day to try newspaper-selling. Being well dressed, she had a terrible experience. When she started to sell, 275 PARIS REBORN she was accused by the newsboys and newsgirls of wanting to rob them of their only means of subsist- ence, and was insulted until strength and nerve failed. She had to give up. This is one of thou- sands of cases, of which one hears only by accident. In my experience, I have generally found that the person who is without money through no fault of his own is the last person in the world to ask for help. Almost invariably, opportunities for charity which come to one through the solicitation of the ob- ject of charity are merely invitations to waste your money. The classes that are hardest hit in Paris to-day are the theatrical people and the artists. No theaters or music halls or cafes are running. There is not in Paris the opportunity for a singer, an actor, a dancer or a musician to make any money at all. This class is generally helpless in every other way. Children are trained for the stage and for music from an early age, and know nothing else. An effort is being made to prevent these thousands of helpless theatri- cal people from starving by the establishment of cantines, where meals are served for a few sous on the presentation of a card from a committee which has carefully investigated each case. The Jardin de Paris on the Champs-Elysees has been turned into a huge refectory. Artists and art students are proverbially poor. 276 A CITY SUFFERING A great many of them are dependent upon remit- tances from their families or the occasional sale of a picture. This applies even to those who do very good work. Remittances are not coming to Paris now, and pictures are not being bought. In the Montparnasse Quarter, there are many cantines for artists. A committee has been formed to help those who find themselves now in destitution. It is hoped that this work will result in the elimination from the Quarter of a horde of incapables, who have for years been using art as an excuse for loafing. The committee knows these cases. Argument has always failed heretofore to prevail upon the idlers of the Quarter to go home or get a job. Now the oppor- tunity has come to enforce the point of view of their friends upon many who have been posing as students or as artists just about to "arrive." Art students are not the only foreigners who have been inconvenienced by the sudden outbreak of war. Paris is full of students from every country of Eu- rope who depend upon a monthly remittance from home. The remittances have stopped. Men stu- dents can enlist in the Foreign Legion. But women are "up against it" in the very toughest sense of the phrase. I have seen many girls, espe- cially from Russia and Poland, who have nothing to eat and no friends. They cannot benefit by the measures of public relief which the Government has 277 PARIS REBORN taken for its own women and children without re- sources, and by the cantines established for special categories of sufferers. They are too proud to beg and too good to do worse : so they starve. What it must be to be a stranger, starving in Paris ! Every tragedy has its lighter side. The wards of the Chinese Government studying in Paris are mostly sons of mandarins — young men who find themselves absolutely helpless when the monthly re- mittance does not arrive. They have applied to their embassy and to their consulate in vain. In the old aristocratic Rue de Babylone (hidden by a wall unless you know where to look for it) is a wonderful Chinese pagoda — I use the word for want of a better one, and plead ignorance as to its proper use here. At any rate, beyond that wall in that queer oriental house is the home of the Chinese Ambassador to France. Last night a party of sixty hungry students went to see their country's repre- sentative. They did not listen to the protests of the concierge, and he was not quick enough in trying to shut the door. They got inside, invaded the Embassy and found a delicious meal in the dining- room awaiting His Excellency. Not only did they eat everything on the table, but, being sixty, they filled out a good round banquet by raiding the pan- try. While the students were thus occupied, the Am- 278 A CITY SUFFERING bassador returned. Hearing from the concierge what was happening inside, he decided that prudence was the better part of valor, and retired to a nearby restaurant for dinner and to telephone the police. It took more than words to get the students out. I understand that the police did not go at their task very strenuously. There is nothing that a Parisian enjoys, even though he be an officer of the law, more than a good joke. Before he slept that night, His Excellency sent a wire to Peking for funds. The telegraph operator declares that it was marked "Urgent." November eighteenth. There are two grave questions disturbing the al- ready disturbed economic condition of France, and nowhere are they more clearly seen than in Paris to-day. A large number of workingmen and em- ployers are profiting by the state of war to take advantage of each other. The most fit in the nation have gone to war. Those that have been refused for army service are either unfit from the standpoint of some physical de- fect or are beyond the age of conscription. Conse- quently, even in the limited amount of industry that is being carried on, it seems impossible for the employers of good faith to get capable workmen or to make it profitable for them to carry on their busi- 279 PARIS REBORN ness. In most industries, it is less of a loss to the employer to keep shut up entirely than to carry on business shorthanded or with incapables. But there are employers who have the yellow streak in them, and are deliberately using the war as an excuse for cutting down the salaries of their employees to the lowest possible point. Many man- ufacturers who are still doing good business have re- duced the wages of those who work for them fifty per cent. Of course, no blame can be attached to the employer who finds himself embarrassed by the war, and unable to give employment at all, unless he does so at reduced wages. But there are a good many lines of business that the war has prospered. An investigation by some Paris newspapers of the wage rolls of factories where war supplies are being turned out has revealed the fact that employers have been getting work out of their workmen for half pay, when they themselves are earning more than under normal conditions. This exploitation has been called to the attention of the military authori- ties. The workingmen's unions argue that the Government is justified in establishing a minimum wage where it is ascertained that the employer has not been affected adversely by the war, just as it has established a maximum price for foodstuffs. On the other hand, much fault lies with the work- ingmen in this large city who have not been called 280 A CITY SUFFERING to the army. Many thousands of them take the present situation as an excuse for not working, even when there is work for them to do. Every day workmen are advertised for, and more and more positions are opening to men, as available men be- come fewer. And yet, if you go at meal-time to any one of the thousands of charitable agencies in Paris, you will see any number of husky looking men, standing in line with their kettle for soup. They are taking the war as an excuse for a pro- tracted period of rest. They find they can get enough soup and bread to keep them going. Why then work1? It takes a situation like this to show people how difficult is the problem of alleviating human misery. It is easy enough to say that there are plenty who are in want, and to gather money and clothing and other things for distribution. But it requires an unusual amount of ability and perspicacity to be a successful worker among the unfortunate and poor. For the distribution of relief is a hundred times harder than gathering funds for relief. One never realizes how hard it is to get in touch with real want until he tries to distribute relief funds. 281 XXIX THE REFUGEES September twenty-fourth. IT was just four weeks ago that they began to come, bringing the first news of defeat. Refu- gees are the heralds of the enemy's triumph. It has been in Paris just as it was in Constantinople after Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas. Only the names of the scenes of disaster are different. Are they Charleroi and St. Quentin*? We are still in the dark. For even since the tide turned the Gov- ernment has not allowed the publication of the events so nobly redeemed from the Marne to the Aisne, in the valleys of the Grand Morin and the Ourcq. At the end of October, 1912, the Seras- kerat, busily engaged in packing its precious papers for Brusa, gave out the news that "all was going well on the front." But the refugees came pouring into Stamboul. Irrefutable denial of the official statements! At the end of August, 1914, the Rue St. Dominique, busily engaged in packing its pre- cious papers for Bordeaux, gave out the news that 282 THE REFUGEES "all was going well at the front." But the refu- gees came pouring into Paris. Irrefutable denial, again, of official statements! Tchataldja saved the Turks and confounded the Bulgarians; the Marne saved the French and confounded the Ger- mans. How history repeats itself! But in Turkey the eleventh-hour victory, or check to the forward march of the enemy, did not save the refugees. In France it has been the same. Sacrificed, perhaps, to strategy in the latter case, though certainly not in the former, the war to the refugees has been all horror from the beginning, and has brought no day of joy and exultation in the sud- den turn of the tide. We thought in Constantinople that we should never live to see a repetition of the heart-rending scenes (I use a hackneyed expression for once cor- rectly) of aged and infirm, of women and children, without clothing, without food, without shelter, wandering through the streets of a great city, their faces stamped with a fear that was fresh and not yet allayed, with a grief for members of the family killed or missing, with a hopelessness that alms and kind words of cheer could not lift. For the disaster of husband and sons shot, of homes pillaged and burned, of crops destroyed, of business ruined, of ex- ile in utter destitution, puts the refugee beyond the comfort of the sympathy of one who can say, "Yes, I 283 PARIS REBORN know: for I have suffered as you are suffering." For none can say that who has not himself been a refugee from war, from fire, from flood, from earth- quake, from pestilence. No, I must qualify this statement : I must limit it to refugee from war. For fire, flood, earthquake, pestilence — these are sudden calamities which pass as suddenly, and are accepted with resignation, be- cause they are beyond human control. But war does not pass quickly. It follows the victim: the fear remains. And it is not accepted: there is no resignation. For war is man-willed and man-made — a breaking out of primitive passions that civiliza- tion has not conquered. It is man in collusion with the devil who fights. God has nothing to do with it. The victim suffers — and continues to suffer. The French refugees hope soon to go home. For many the hope has already been realized. The Germans are retreating. Most of those who stay do not feel exiled. Paris is home to every French- man. But the Belgians ! However much may be done to minister lovingly to the wants of these poor peo- ple, the alleviation of their mental suffering is im- possible. Nothing grips one's heart more than to see little children still under the spell of the terror of the awful scenes they have witnessed. To talk to children who had been driven from burning 284 THE REFUGEES homes, who had been spattered with the blood of father and brother and mother, who even carried wounds on their own little bodies, was my sad task in Asia Minor during the Adana massacres. But this is Paris. This is Europe. This is the Chris- tian world. And yet those old painful memories live again, and I see once more baby faces to which a smile cannot be coaxed. Think what it must mean to have no husband, no grown sons, no home, no possessions, no money, no chance to work, and, placed against that, the re- sponsibility of several little mouths to feed. To all of us, perhaps, at one time or other in our lives, the past has been naught and the present black. But the Belgian refugees have no future. We can give them no hope. When they ask, "When shall we be able to go back to our homes'?" there is noth- ing to do but to turn aside and pretend that one has not heard the question. Say what they will about anticipation of an- other's intention, about necessity, about imperative considerations of national safety, the men who or- dered, and the men who obeyed the order for, the invasion of Belgium will never be able to explain, will never be able to justify themselves. For the Belgians, ghosts, prisoners and exiles, have already come before the tribunal of world-wide public opin- ion. The German cause is lost before it is pleaded, 285 PARIS REBORN lost before it is fought to a decisive issue. And, as if there were not Belgians enough to accuse and condemn, there are the three-times-within-a-cen- tury-similarly-sinned-against people of Northern France.1 When we first saw the refugees (and one well un- derstands that they must have come in great num- bers before they were noticeable in a city like Paris), they were all supposed to be Belgians. We took it for granted. We had reason to: for they were of the unmistakable Flemish peasant type. Their French, if they could speak the language at all, was halting. But soon we began to notice the Lillois. Then they came from Arras, from Amiens, from Soissons, from Senlis, from Beauvais, from Com- 1 Aside from the incalculable and irreparable material damage done to Reims, Soissons, Senlis, Albert, Arras, and other towns, and to communes of lesser importance, the Germans have levied severe war contributions in cash and army supplies upon the cities of Northern France. They have destroyed factories in the region of Lille and Maubeuge, and have carried away raw material. Most of the cities and communes that are suffering these losses were vic- tims of the German invasions of 1814 and 1870. A number of com- munes are still paying off the loans contracted to meet the German •war contributions of 1870. And now they have been mulcted again! The most striking illustration is the city of Amiens, which owes still, as a municipal debt, over three million francs, due to meeting the contribution of war levied upon Amiens in 1870. The citizens of Amiens have been paying ever since 1870 a per capita tax in interest alone of fifty centimes per year for the purchase of immunity at that time. I read that they are now saddled with another million! 286 '• i%' y s4-J In the Latin Quarter. En queue at a soup cantine THE REFUGEES piegne, from Chateau-Thierry, from Chantilly, from Meaux.1 As the German invasion spread and drew nearer Paris, the refugees appeared in our streets with their carts, their salvage of household goods, their cattle, their barnyard fowls. As the refugees poured in, the froussards poured out. The two streams met at the railway stations and the city gates, each fleeing before the Germans — but in a different direction! The big heart of the larger and nobler Paris, which showed no fear for personal safety, no anxiety for personal comfort, no worry for "the treasures laid up on earth," has been devoting itself these past four weeks to the wounded and the refugees. I have always loved the "French of the people" that one sees exemplified so worthily by the population of Paris, the French who work hard for their living and get more out of life than any other people in the world — the real Parisians, sober, industrious, cheerful, warm-hearted, generous without advertise- ment, moral without cant. I rejoiced in the un- paralleled example of civic courage they gave to the world during the Great Flood of 1910. But I love 1 1 speak of these cities and towns as centers of regions. Most of the refugees were, of course, country people from isolated farms and hamlets. The city people thought they had nothing to fear. In all instances, alas! their optimism was not well founded. There has been a difference between 1870 and 1914, not to the credit of the latter. 289 PARIS REBORN them more now, and I am glad that it is my privilege to have my home and raise my family among such a people. The Parisians have had no time to think of what might have been — of what might yet be — in store for them. They have forgotten their own suffer- ings, their own cares, their own financial burdens, in the face of the greater suffering that has been so suddenly and so abundantly revealed to them. While they waited for the wounded, who, for some mysterious reason, have not come, they have min- istered to the refugees. Each arrondissement of Paris is vying with the others in providing clothing and warm food and shelter, in caring for the sick and the babies. There is more than generosity. There is tenderness. What a reflection upon our modern Anglo-Saxon civilization that we have taken the original King James' version meaning out of the word charity, and have limited it to something impersonal, and, since impersonal, ergo repellent! In French, charite is still defined as love of God and fellowman. So there is more than generosity. There is tenderness. I could fill a book with what I have seen in my own quartier of the poor helping the poor, of the charity that means taking the object of charity into your own home and sharing with him your crust. When you go among the common people of Paris, you find 290 THE REFUGEES that every one has done it, and has done it as the perfectly natural thing to do. It is not only a civic duty, it is a civic privilege. Who wrote that the French were a degenerate race*? Oh, the presumption of ignorance! I wish I could take the slanderer around Paris to-day. I wish I could show him the Cirque de Paris, whose arena is famous in the world of sport, turned into a hospice for the refugees, where none applies in vain for a roof over his head, for medical attend- ance, for food, for clothing. The Government has made no appropriation, nor has the municipality. Out of the gifts of the people of the neighborhood all who come are ministered unto. It does not mat- ter how many come. There is enough for all. And the first service rendered to them is the cutting off of shoes and rags, and the washing of the weary bruised feet by women volunteers. I wish I could take the slanderer to the old Seminary of Saint Sulpice, which is soon to be the new Luxembourg Picture Gallery. There other refugees find a haven. The mother, footsore and desperate from the baby's continual cry for milk and the other children's cry for bread, is met with outstretched arms, and greeted with brimming eyes, brave smile and a kiss. The kiss does more to renew her courage than food. But there is food, too. And do you know, Mr. Slanderer, how that food has 291 PARIS REBORN been cooked? Across from the Seminary is the Mairie of the Sixth Arrondissement. The police- men, attached to the poste there, are giving up in turns their rest and meal hour to do the cooking. When the influx was greatest, and the soup portion would have given out, the policemen contributed more than their meal hour. Their meal, too, was slipped into the pot, and none knew but God. 292 XXX SPIES September twenty-fifth. DURING the first week of the war, I saw a number of man hunts. Frequently it was an altogether innocent person that was mauled by the crowd; in more than one instance, in fact, I saw Frenchmen — Parisians who had never been out of the city and had never spoken to a German in their lives — badly beaten. One could not reason with the crowd. After all, the excitement and the nervousness were not unnatural. Germany let loose the war, and even before it was declared her troops were over our borders. They were boasting that they would be in Paris in a fortnight. The knowledge that there were thousands of Germans in the city sending out information to aid the invaders made Parisians sus- picious. It is curious how suspicion works. When you are thinking hard about a thing or looking for it (that is, anything except money) you see it all around you. Whenever I am waiting anywhere 293 PARIS REBORN for some one, I see him a dozen times in the crowd before he really arrives. In our mental processes, we habitually jump to conclusions. It is a wonder that we hit things right as often as we do. I re- member in those first few days how I would sit on the terrace of a cafe, looking at my neighbors and scanning carefully the faces of those who passed. I could swear that every other man was a German. I was positive of it. The Gallic type of coun- tenance seemed to have disappeared. When I got over thinking about Germans and spies, I never sus- pected any one I met of being a "Boche." So it was with all the Parisians. The mad period of man-hunting was a phase that passed quickly. There were other things to think about. We heard no more about the Germans in Paris. Some had been expelled from France; others had been sent into detention camps; but the majority of them re- mained and prudently kept under cover. Only if a neighbor had a personal spite against some one and denounced him at the police station, was a German molested.1 1 More than fifty thousand Germans were living in Paris at the moment the war broke out. Many who did not conform to the order of the Government to report to their police station within forty-eight hours of the beginning of the mobilization were hunted down mercilessly, and haled before courts martial as spies. At the moment wild rumors gained credence in Paris that German spies had been shot. The most persistent canard had it that the pro- prietor of a fashionable hotel on the Champs-Elysees was caught 294 SPIES That was while we thought we were winning. When we woke up to the fact that we were not win- ning and that Von Kluck was on his way to see us, there were more engrossing subjects for the Parisians and the authorities to think about than the ques- tion of what to do with the Germans who had been granted permis de sejour to remain in Paris. These two weeks that have followed the Battle of the Marne have witnessed the growth of a feeling of bitterness and hostility toward the Germans as a nation naturally translated into a hatred of the Germans as individuals. This hatred is differ- ent from the effervescent demonstrations against the Germans during the first week of the war. Nothing effervescent is serious. The more the ef- fervescence the less the effect (of course, I except champagne!). So the rowdyism of August second and third had no consequences. We heard about the atrocities and the destruction wrought by the German army in Belgium in August, and we were as indignant as it was possible to be over the sufferings and misfortunes of others. But we know how superficial that indignation was when we contrast it with the way the suffering of our own receiving the messages from the Eiffel Tower by means of a wire- less installation upon his roof, and shot on the spot. This was afterwards formally denied. No German spy was killed in Paris: none was condemned to death. 295 PARIS REBORN people, the destruction of our own monuments stirs us up. The German who harmed the Belgians was a bad fellow : the German who harms the French is the devil incarnate. So it goes. Since the Battle of the Marne, the newspapers have done their work. They have spread far and wide the news of what has happened to the people and to the cities of northern and eastern France. Every German in Paris is anathema. He is a spy: and if there is n't proof enough to court-martial him, he can at least be shut up in prison. But why a spy"? Germans who have been living here for long years, whose interests and associations are wholly in Paris and with the Parisians — ought they to be treated as spies'? Is not prejudice and passion at work*? Ought noncombatant Germans to suffer for what the armies of their country, for which they are not responsible, have done*? Is there any rhyme or reason in the wholesale arrest of thou- sands who have given no ground for suspicion, and many of whom can hardly speak the language, if they speak it at all, of the country of which they are technically subjects? If I did not live in Paris, if I did not understand and appreciate the motives underlying the arrest and sending to detention camps of all German subjects, I might, as other correspondents have done, write in protest against the wholesale decree that is result- 296 SPIES ing in so much suffering for its innocent victims. Many of them are innocent victims. When it comes to the individual case in which my personal sympathies are enlisted by personal ac- quaintance with the victim, I have protested. I have called the law an outrage because it does not discriminate. For example, a young woman whom I knew came to me in great distress, and begged me to in- tercede for her. Married to a German who is a chauffeur in England, she is a Parisian, daughter of a veteran of 1870, granddaughter of a colonel in the Due d'Aumale's glorious Algerian army. She had in her hand her acte de naissance to prove that she was French, and the papers to substantiate her statements about her father and grandfather. I went with her to the commissaire. He was ob- durate. Her marriage to a German was sufficient to apply the decree against her. "Nothing to dis- cass, Monsieur," he said, and when he saw that I did not take this as final and was about to continue my plea for her, he got up and slammed his fist down upon the desk, and cried in a voice loud enough to be heard by every one in the room, "Were you the Minister of War himself, you could not succeed in keeping this woman from going into the detention camp!" The commissaire was right. There could be no 297 PARIS REBORN exceptions, and the innocent would have to suffer with the guilty. It is easy enough to urge that Great Britain and Germany are showing no such intolerance, and have not molested the women and children of alien enemies. But neither Great Britain nor Germany is invaded. The case is not analogous. There has been spying here, and plenty of it. It has been car- ried on in the most unbelievable ways, with the most uncanny and devilish skill, and by the most unsus- pected persons. This spying has aided the Germans during the past month. It is aiding them now. France is fighting for national existence. Paris is still the objective of the German armies. There is no way of separating the sheep from the goats. All must go. So the Germans of Paris, women and children as well as men, are leaving us. The scenes in the dif- ferent commissariats., where they were called for the revocation of their permis de sejour, awaken pity for these victims of the war, most of them poor, honest folk, whose whole life is being ruined by the war. They are leaving by trains from St. Lazare. They do not know where they are going. The fu- ture is black. Most of them love France — at least, they love the Paris that is home to them — far more than they do Germany. But they must suffer for the sins of their countrymen: they must suffer for 298 SPIES the base treachery of those among them, safe from detection, who have eaten the salt of Paris while betraying Paris. There is something dramatic about their exit. For, as the German spies and suspected spies leave Paris, they pass at the railway station the refugees coming in from the north. In each pitiful line, going out in terror and coming in from terror, there is the same succession of husbandless women with children and babies. Their men are righting at the front, against each other mostly. The lines pass, and there is hardness of heart on both sides. You see it in the faces. You see it in the weary shoul- ders, drawn up for the moment in scorn and defiance, in the attempt to prove oneself unbroken, in the attempt to prove the other the transgressor. But sinner and sinned against, the suffering is the same. This is war. 299 XXXI THE NEW KULTURKAMPF September twenty-sixth. Germans have been instilling, little by JL little, their poison into the hearts of all peo- ples. If it is true that the soul of a race is in its language, this is still more true of its music. Lis- ten to the songs of Naples, Spain, Russia, Sweden, and Arabia : are they not the very portraits of these peoples'? Do they not tell more about their nature than all the commentaries'? We have no more use for the German language, we do not wish to speak it, we do not wish to learn it, we do not wish to sing it. And yet some are saying that we do not need to give up Richard Wagner. How many times will it be necessary to repeat that this music, without the language that accompanies it, is incom- prehensible, and that those who think they under- stand the music without the language are greatly de- luded4? But this delusion pleases them: this chimera attracts them. It must have taken upon them a very strong hold if they dare to say at this moment that they are held by the spell of Parsifal." 300 THE NEW KULTURKAMPF My hand, stretched out for the honey while I read my morning paper, falls back on the table. My cafe au lait grows cold. Breakfast loses its interest. For this is Camille Saint-Saens, writing in the Echo de Paris, daring to express over his signature that unbelievable phenomenon, the growth of which I have been noticing since the war began. Let us read on. "I have said what I think of this impenetrable work, where the sublime rubs elbows with the ridic- ulous in the midst of an atmosphere of boredom, whose most beautiful pages accompany the sacri- legious parading of the ceremonies of Catholicism, where one sees the Holy Spirit Himself descended from heaven as a dove, suspended on a thread. Thirty years of waiting and advertisement have made it an enormous success. Will the French people finish by perceiving that this work, whatever may be its merits, is not made for them"? These long-drawn-out scenes, this heaviness, these obscuri- ties, this false mysticism, this unwearying prolixity, what have they to do with our French soul which loves only frankness and clearness*? "Before Richard Wagner, all the greatest com- posers wrote honest music. It was he who, unfor- tunately, gave fashion to charlatanism. "After the massacre of women and children, after the bombardment of hospitals, after the destruction 301 PARIS REBORN of cathedrals, after the desecration of burial places, after the cynical confession of hate for France, how can there be found a single Frenchman to demand the music of the 'fakir,' whom Germany has con- sidered for a long time its national genius'? The morality of individuals is not that of nations. We may forget the injuries of nations — perhaps that is a virtue — but Wagner was of those who insulted the French people. The forgetfulness of such an insult is a fault. Would you go to applaud a mar- velous singer if he had insulted your mother*?" This piece of stupidity is in keeping with the movement of which we hear from London to bar from concert programs the works of Germans, and to replace them by the productions of loyal British, French, and Russians. Ye Gods! Is this war to deprive us of the great masters'? Is it treason and denial of country to listen to Beethoven, Mendels- sohn, Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Wagner, Schubert, Handel, Liszt, Meyerbeer, and Strauss *? * Saint-Saens in the field of music is only one in- 1 The most popular concerts — and yet of a very high grade — in Paris are the Concerts Touche, on the Boulevard de Strasbourg. I have taken at random one of the weekly programs of last win- ter's season. During the week December thirteenth-eighteenth, I9I3» eight concerts were given. In every one of them, except a soiree devoted exclusively to the works of Beethoven, Wagner's name appeared at least once on the program. Once it appeared three times, and two other times twice. Of the seventy-five num- bers played, thirty-five were of German composers. 302 THE NEW KULTURKAMPF stance of how the French are writing against all forms of German Kultur. The starting-point has been the response of the five famous academies to the manifesto of the ninety-three German intellectu- els. They have dropped from active and cor- responding membership all subjects of Wilhelm II and Franz Josef on the ground that these learned men have defended the barbarism and maintained the righteousness of their country in the present war. Then — how human nature does show itself to be primeval ! — it has only been a step from this action to the questioning of the reality and worth of the scholarship and genius of men who could belong to such a nation as that which burned Louvain. The German Kultur defended the burning of Louvain. These men are exponents of that Kultur. So, Wundt is not a good psychologist, Eucken is a poor philosopher, Ostwald a chemist of mediocre attain- ments, Roentgen rays are valueless, Deissmann's Greek might be better, Lasson is a humbug, and Harnack is insane. If the Kultur of the present generation in Ger- many is a bubble, pricked in Belgium, how about that of the fathers and grandfathers'? Nothing good ever could have come out of such a race of bar- barians! I have been reading literary men on Goethe and Schiller, philosophers on Kant and Lotze, naturalists on Humboldt, historians on 303 PARIS REBORN Mommsen and Ranke, and so on, until I find the idea insidiously put into my head that, after all, Frenchmen and Britishers have really been supreme in every field of intellectual endeavor. But when it comes to music — well, I let my coffee get cold. Heretofore, we have regarded the productions of the human soul and the human intellect to be far above the clash of human passions and human greed. Genius has been international, and the one to whom has been granted the gift of song, of poetry, of color, or of insight into the secrets of hu- man nature and the laws of God, has been proudly claimed as a citizen of the world, belonging to, and a benefactor of, the whole human race. But now we must ask where a man was born, if he be dead, or to show his passport, if he be living, before we read what he has written, or listen to the message he has to give. I shall wait for the protests against the new Kul~ turkampf. But I feel sure that they will not come now. Never struggle of race with race was bit- terer than this one. Who would have thought that in the twentieth century the highest musical and in- tellectual leaders of France would be advising and advocating a national boycott of the great masters, and of the contributions to science that have made Berlin and Vienna, Jena and Heidelberg, Bonn and Leipzig, foyers from which every student and 304 THE NEW KULTURKAMPF thinker the world over has taken inspiration for a great deal that is best and highest in his life? This new Kulturkampf is more than an indica- tion of the bitterness and hatred the German strug- gle for world supremacy has called forth. It shows to what a depth of folly war instincts let loose can bring down the wisest and most gifted of men. 30$ XXXII AND THEN THE HANDELSKAMPF September twenty-eighth. I WENT into my stationer's this morning for some of my favorite carbon paper, and when he told me that he had no more of it, and would have no more, because it is manufactured in Vienna, I started to grumble. The Stationer was amused, and gave his usual deprecatory, propitiating gesture of shoulders and hands working in unison. He knows well enough that French carbon paper is very poor, and that the antiquated method, inherited from remote ancestors, of packing the English brands dries out the sheets before they reach the cus- tomer in a foreign market. But the General Staff Officer, who was ordering some visiting-cards, answered me back. "What right have you to raise a fuss over a per- fectly natural and patriotic state of affairs'?" he de- manded. "If you love France, as you profess to do when you are smoking my cigars at the Club, you would pat the Stationer on the back. More than that, you would tell him, as I have done several 306 AND THEN THE HANDELSKAMPF times in the past half hour, that he ought to throw out of his shop every article he has in stock of Ger- man and Austrian manufacture." The arm that was more accustomed to brandish- ing a billiard cue than a sword was agitated in an increasingly eloquent marking time to words as the General Staff Officer demonstrated that the hour had come for France to rise up in her wrath and boycott everything "made in Germany." "I tell you," he shouted, "that we have been fools — fools, I repeat it, my friend — to allow the Ger- mans and Austrians to come into France and cap- ture our markets. Why should our good money go to the barbarians'? It makes me boil to think of how we have been pouring out our gold, through pure gentillesse, through our careless and mistaken notions of courtesy and politeness, to build up Ger- man factories, and increase the power of our ene- mies to fashion their hellish Krupp cannon to strike us when they got good and ready. O fools, fools, fools, we French have been !" With this the General Staff Officer blew out of the shop, and was lost in the crowd entering the gate of the Luxembourg opposite before I had time to recover my breath, and before his orderly, who had been trying to find a substitute for absinthe at the cafe next door, was able to pay for his drink and hurry after him. 307 PARIS REBORN "Feels pretty strongly, does n't he?" I said to the Stationer. The Stationer looked disgusted. "Sounds patriotic. He is the great I AM, and he thinks he has found THE GREAT IDEA. Do you know, I am one of the largest purveyors to the E fat- Major. The War Department of France has been for years a consistent buyer of German and Aus- trian goods. They always want the best of every- thing, and, in my business at least, that best comes from Vienna." The Stationer took my arm, and guided me to his show cases. "Then look at these novelties. Practically every- thing I have in this line, things that are attractive in themselves, that are time-saving, that are clever, that are practical — the little articles that you feel you want the moment you see them — all these things here are made in Germany. For instance, take this inkstand. It has a heavy base, and ap- peals to you as sensible. For you have always been upsetting inkstands. Voila, here is one that will not upset. You buy it. The Germans study the art of supplying the market with what cus- tomers want. We buy their goods because they sell well. You Americans have novelties also, but they cannot compete in price with German goods, and then you have no conception of how to sell on AND THEN THE HANDELSKAMPF credit. It is only in novelties protected by a rigid French patent that you get the better of the Ger- mans. As for us, we French are indifferent, and the English are stupid." I was interested, and the Stationer warmed to his subject. "That General Staff Officer is typical of the asi- ninity and injustice in vogue in Paris since the war began. He wants me to throw out my German stock, does he*? And three months ago he and all his kind would come into my shop, and ask for a certain well-known article. German, of course. If I did not carry it, and offered him a substitute, I would find him sliding out of the door before I fin- ished my sentence. To run a high-class stationery business in Paris, stocking German and Austrian goods has been a sine qua non. Three months ago, if I had not been carrying a large line of goods from Germany and Austria, I would have failed. To- day, since I do not burn up the fifty thousand francs of goods bought by me because the public wanted them and would have no other, I am unpatriotic." So the Handelskampf has followed the Kultur- kampf. It is just as senseless, and far more cruel, because it is affecting thousands of shopkeepers whose fault is that they have been good merchants and have tried to please their customers. There is only one way in which French manufac- 309 PARIS REBORN turers can profit by the war to supplant German and Austrian industries in their own markets and in the markets of the world, and that is by manufacturing articles just as good, just as cheap, and just as at- tractive to the public. In some fields they may suc- ceed. In other fields they will inevitably fail. For we are living in an age of international distribution of labor, and it is as unreasonable to suppose that the manufacturing and commercial genius of the Ger- man race is any more reproducible than its musical genius. Just at this moment I am fully as alarmed about the prospect of a winter without Vienna car- bon paper as I am about the blank months ahead without the Opus 28 sonata of Beethoven. Boycott measures are boomerangs. I have never seen them fail to inconvenience, to injure, the boy- cotters as much as the boycotted. The Kultur- kampf and the Handelskampf will succeed in Paris only on that day when Parisians are able to boast that nothing essential or desirable to satisfy the ma- terial and intellectual and spiritual needs of the French race comes from across the Rhine. 310 XXXIII RED TAPE September twenty-sixth. I WAS on a tram this morning going from the Gare Montparnasse to the Etoile. Opposite me was a wounded soldier, who was evidently not accustomed to crutches, and had great difficulty get- ting to his seat. As he had a bag to carry, he could not have done so without help. When the conduc- tor came for his fare, the soldier looked surprised and stammered something that I did not catch. The conductor insisted. Others, sitting beside him, in- tervened, and paid the conductor. The soldier was greatly embarrassed. He began to tell his story. We gathered that he had been wounded in the Bat- tle of the Marne, and "evacuated" to a hospital in the west of France. When he was discharged, he was sent back to Paris to appear before the Council of Revision, which sits at the Ecole Militaire. Only when given a certificate of incapacity would he be allowed to return to his home. "How long were you on the train*?" "Thirty-six hours." PARIS REBORN "And have you had nothing to eat?" "No : I have no money." "But when they discharged you from the hospital, did they give you no money'?" "No. You see, I was in a military hospital, and they discharged me with a ticket to Paris. In the regulations there is a provision only for a ticket to the point where one must rejoin his regiment or pass before the Council of Revision of the district of his enrollment." Here was red tape with a vengeance. I have gathered so many instances of "applying the rule" that my heart is sick. This soldier in the tram is typical of the machine-like way in which bureau- cracy deals with human beings. The poor fellow had been discharged from a military hospital. They applied the rule — a ticket to Paris! If the man next to him had not intervened, the conductor on the tramcar would have had to apply the rule, and put him off to stumble along to the Ecole Mili- taire the best way he could. It never fails. The routine life of a government office invariably stultifies the initiative and judg- ment of the unfortunates who are chained to desks and bound in their every action by rule. Apply the rule ! That is officialdom in a nutshell. The illustrations of how "the letter killeth" are most striking when gathered from the dealings of 312 RED TAPE officials with the women to whom sorrow and suf- fering have come through the war. Recently the wife of an officer, who had fought with great heroism in defending Maubeuge, could get no information as to his fate. After weeks of the anguish of uncertainty, an employee from the accounting department of the Ministry of War ar- rived at her house with the following note : "Dear Madam, we have just been notified that your husband was killed at Maubeuge on August . On our books, we find that he had received an advance of salary up to September , and that he owed for a leather revolver case. Will you kindly give to the bearer, the sum of francs due to the Government for the advance of salary to your husband from the date of his decease until the period to which he had been paid, and also francs for the revolver case charged against him." I know of other cases where women have gone to the local office where the daily amount allowed to the wives and children of men at the front is paid, and have met the crisp, matter-of-fact statement, "Your husband is dead; your name has been struck off the list." The wives of officers in the departments of the North which are occupied by the enemy are finding it impossible to secure the portions of their hus- bands' salaries that were set aside by agreement at 313 PARIS REBORN the beginning of the war to be directly paid to them each month. For, when these departments were in- vaded, the Government ordered local paymasters to withdraw, taking with them the governmental cash boxes. Many of these women are wholly dependent upon what they draw of their husbands' salaries. One officer's wife has four children. Her hus- band has been cited for bravery in the "Order of the Day." She is without private resources. When Madame went to the local officials who re- mained in her town, and asked them if there was any way in which money due her could be paid, they replied that she would have to make the request on stamped paper, and send it to Bordeaux, where it would be passed upon by a special council. Then, when the paper came back, they would be able to pay her out of the general funds of the municipality. This would constitute a lien against the Govern- ment, to be collected later. "How long will it take?" she asked. "Such a request will probably be returned here with the budget papers on October i." "But what shall I do in the meantime1? Can you not telegraph for the authorization1? I and my children will starve before then." The employee shook his head. "Rule 189, Madame, formally forbids a request for special au- thorization of funds to be made by telegraph." 3H RED TAPE "This is vital to me." "The rule, Madame, has no exception." There was nothing left for the officer's wife to do but to ask alms to prevent her children from starv- ing. I could multiply these cases to show how the in- flexibility of public officials is causing a wholly un- necessary burden of sorrow and anxiety. It is not the destitute who are suffering most. They have known in times of peace what it is to be without means, and have learned how to get assistance. It is the women of the middle classes who would rather die than ask for private help, that are suffering all over France. In the meantime red tape reigns supreme. October thirty-first. The most pitiful feature of the war, as we see it in Paris, is the state of uncertainty in which most people are living. Is the husband, the son, the brother alive, or is he dead*? If he is wounded, is it seriously, and where is he? If he is cold in the trenches, is there any certainty that he received the warm clothing mailed to him*? If he is a prisoner, will he get the money sent to him1? Poor mothers and wives and children of the sol- diers! Suffering women of France! The hag- gard and drawn faces that one sees on the streets 315 PARIS REBORN are due to this failure of the postal administration more than to any other cause. A soldier was wounded on September thirtieth. By accident his wife learned that he had been wounded. She had no official information, and has none yet. On October ninth, she met an officer of her husband's company who told her that her hus- band had a bullet through his shoulder and had been removed by a field ambulance to some base hospital. On October first, she sent him a registered letter; on the third, a registered package; on the seventh, a registered package; on the tenth, a registered letter; on the seventeenth, a registered letter ; on the twenty- third, a money order; on the twenty- fourth and twenty-fifth, telegrams. These communications were all addressed, following the official direction, to the garrison town where he had joined his regi- ment at the time of mobilization. The soldier's wife is poor, and has deprived her- self of necessities to pay the postage. She has had absolutely no word of any kind either from her hus- band or from the military authorities. She says, "I am brave, and I am ready for every sacrifice. I did not weep before my husband on the day of his departure. I showed him that he could go peace- fully to do his duty, that my courage and my re- assuring words would never fail. But to think that he is suffering in some far off corner of France, per- 316 RED TAPE haps dying, without having a word from him, is more than my heart can bear." November twentieth. The Mayor of the village of Pont-en-Royans has seen his hair turn white during the past three months. Loyalty to the administration has kept his lips sealed as to the cause of his troubles. But the last straw has been placed upon the camel's back. M. Hennebert has finally burst forth into public print. He does not care now whether he loses his job or not. He has all he can stand. I am going to let him tell his story. "In my official position, ever since the beginning of the war, there has not been a moment that I have not been besieged by families who have tried to ob- tain news of their children at the front, and who, in some cases, have not heard from their loved ones since the end of August. "Full of confidence in our official machinery, at the beginning I wrote to the proper authorities, who at the end of fifteen days answered me : 'No infor- mation; presumably in good health.' "And I used to say to the families : 'Every even- ing they sound the call, and in each regiment they gather the names of those who have been killed and wounded. If a soldier does not answer eight days on end, then they report him as disappeared. In 317 PARIS REBORN this case, he may be either dead or prisoner, but, at any rate, at the end of eight days, if he is no longer with his regiment, his name is written down and sent to the Ministry. " Then, since the name of your child has not been given to be sent in to the Ministry, it is because he is with the others in his regiment; that is why they write to you "Presumably in good health." ' "Alas! I have for a long time lost confidence in the information given by the Ministry. One day, I received concerning a certain soldier the customary information, 'Presumably in good health.' Six days later, I was informed by the Council of Admin- istration of this regiment of the decease of this sol- dier, 'Dead a month and a half ago/ "For another soldier I receive the ordinary printed slip, 'Presumably in good health.' I tell his wife. Eight days after, his wife receives from him a postal card from Germany, announcing that he has been a prisoner for five weeks ! "I could go on ad nauseam^ but this is enough to show you what my situation is when mothers come to ask about their boys. Ought I to continue to write and fool them by these printed slips, 'Pre- sumably in good health' ? Here is a story to top off all the rest. "Officially, on the twenty-ninth of September, I am told to notify the family of the soldier Regnier 3-8 RED TAPE of his decease. Officially, mind you. So I go to their home to break the news. In the midst of their tears and their cries, the family show me the last postal card from the young soldier which was re- ceived that very morning, and dated September twenty-seventh, that is, two days before. But the notice of decease is that he died on September sev- enth. I say to the father: 'I would not give you too great hope. Your child must have died the twenty-seventh, perhaps suddenly, and the secretary charged with transcribing the letter I have received must have forgotten the cipher. Instead of the twenty-seventh, he must have put the seventh. But for all that, a doubt exists. Don't worry too much. I am going to find out the truth of the matter.' "I write to the Council of Administration. They answer: 'There has been no error. The official notice of decease carries indeed the date of Septem- ber seventh. If, then, the soldier has written the twenty-seventh, it is that he is not dead. We shall notify the Ministry. On your side, you ought to write to the hospital where he was in treatment and from which his death was reported.' "I write to the chief physician of Besanc/m — no response. I send him a telegram with answer pre- paid— no response. So I write him a letter, this time a little hot. Finally I receive a telegram: 'We do not know one Regnier at the hospital.' 319 PARIS REBORN "I am still holding this telegram in my hand when there comes to my office with smiling face the sister of the dead man, who holds out to me a let- ter: 'Monsieur le Maire, my brother has written to us again.' I take the letter to examine it. There is no error. The dead man had written on October second. " 'Very well,' I say to the family. 'Now you are reassured.' "Several days afterwards, I finally receive from the hospital of the Red Cross a letter giving me news of Regnier, telling me that there are several hos- pitals in the city, that they have only just received my letter, etc. "I thought no more of this affair until October twenty-third. Then I received a notice from the Prefecture of Besangon begging me to advise the family of the soldier Regnier that he had been wounded, and was being treated at the hospital at Besangon. "Finally, I thought that this affair was indeed closed, when, to-day, October thirtieth, I received a telegram sent to me by some one — I don't know by whom — which informs me that the soldier Regnier is unknown in the hospitals at Besangon. "Oh, my head ! My head ! I do not care what happens if I send this story to a newspaper. Any- thing is better than having to give false news, and 320 RED TAPE to play in this farcical manner with the affections of those who are giving their children for the salva- tion of France." 321 i XXXIV SHARING THE GLORY October second. REMEMBER having heard M. Emile Faguet say some years ago that the French are, indi- vidually, the most jealous race in the world of each other's attainments and achievements. The state- ment is true, when it is limited to the intellectual classes — except that M. Faguet forgot the Italians. But, while incompatibility (to use the euphemistic term) is common among men of talent working in the same field, strangely enough it does not hold equally true if the man who is doing the same kind of thing you are doing is a foreigner. The French- man does not brook the other Frenchman who dares to rival him, but he extends a hand to the competi- tor of another nation. If there is no more jealous race than the French in their relations with each other, at the same time there is no more generous race in their praise of out- siders. I have friends who do not agree with this opinion, and who bring up proofs from their own experience to refute it. But the instances they cite 322 SHARING THE GLORY are the exceptions that prove the rule. I hold to this opinion since the war began more strongly than ever before. And I have good reason to do so. The spirit of generosity and the lack of jealousy shown by the French press during these past three months in regard to the exploits of their allies is wonderful. From the very first moment of the war, the Brit- ish Expeditionary Corps, although comprising only a tenth of the forces in action, has received the warmest praises from every newspaper in Paris. There has never been a word of criticism, even after the disastrous retreat from Charleroi to Compiegne. Full credit has been given to the important part that the British played in the Battle of the Marne, and in the present struggle along the Aisne. The same spirit has been displayed towards the Belgians. The French have been untiring in their praise of the heroism of the Belgians at the moment of the German invasion, and have not hesitated to admit that the defense of Liege probably prevented the capture of Paris by the Germans. We read constantly in the papers about the exploits of the Belgians and the British, and I have never once seen the suggestion that the Allies were after all a negligi- ble factor in the defense of France. The colonial troops from Morocco, Tunis, and Senegal have also had a good press. In fact, they 323 PARIS REBORN have been spoken of as the most daring and most efficient element in the offensive movements in Al- sace, Lorraine, and Belgium at the beginning of the war. It is reported that the Germans are more afraid of them than any other body of men among their opponents. Space also has been devoted to the movements of the Russian armies in Russian and Austrian Poland. It has been pointed out that the advance of General Rennenkampf, although it did not end successfully, was of very great service to the French army, because it compelled Germany to send many of her best regi- ments from the French field of action to stem the tide of the Russian invasion. One able French critic has declared that the way the Russian cam- paign has been managed from the very first day of the war has helped more in the salvation of France than if the troops engaged there had been actually united with the French army in repelling the Ger- man dash on Paris. I contrast this admirable loyalty and generous spirit of praise which France has shown with the despicable spirit of all the Balkan allies during their war with Turkey. Their self-conceit and jealousy prevented Bulgarians, Greeks, and Servians from seeing the importance of what other armies than their own had done. The spirit of France is an excellent augury of harmony in the settlement of 324 SHARING THE GLORY the issues of the war. Germany cannot hope that those who are opposing her will fall out amongst themselves. November twenty-sixth. The French press is growing very restless over the continuance of the severe military censorship, which maintains its rule of brevity and anonymity in re- porting the events of the battle-fields. There is cold comfort for the journalists to have to publish, and for the people to have to continue to read daily, about the wonderful progress of the Russian armies against Austria and Germany, and the important part played by Russia in preventing the total con- centration of the best German troops between Paris and Calais. Bitterer still is the fact that the British news- papers seem to be given carte blanche to reproduce in the smallest detail the operations of their Expe- ditionary Corps in France and to give credit to in- dividuals for exploits of war. In default of infor- mation of the movements of their own army, the Paris newspapers reproduce the accounts written by British journalists, and are naturally full of what the British army is doing. The result is that when we open our newspapers at the breakfast table, we have every day glowing and detailed accounts of how the British bulldogs 325 PARIS REBORN are holding back the Germans on the Belgian fron- tier and saving the day for France. One would think that the French army was standing by and look- ing on while the British and Germans fought it out between them. The same thing is true of the avia- tion corps. We hear continually of daring raids of British aviators into German territory and of the dropping of bombs on Zeppelin sheds one hundred and fifty kilometers from the French frontier. The French are getting restless. They would be inhuman if they were not. They reason: we have ten times as many airmen as the British, and our army in the field is five times as large as that of the British. Our losses since the beginning of the war — although we have no definite information — have certainly exceeded the total number of the British forces engaged. Are the deeds of our soldiers and of our airmen to pass in silence and go into oblivion, while those of our allies are held up to us daily in glowing reports'? But while they are eager to hear of French feats of arms, they do not translate this eagerness into jealousy of their allies. The military writers con- tinue to give unstinted praise to the British and Russians, and to acknowledge the essential aid of the Belgians. The policy of silence and anonymity is burdensome, but it is being borne. In private conversation as well as in the newspapers, the re- 326 SHARING THE GLORY straint is splendid. There is glory enough for all. The French are giving it to others, and waiting pa- tiently for their share. Could there be greater glory than just this*? 327 XXXV THE CENSORSHIP AGAIN October third. THE censorship in France has never been more strict than during these trying weeks of con- tinual conflict on the Aisne. There is no newspa- per which is edited with sufficient care to avoid the displeasure of the censor. Even the semi-official Temps has blank places on every page, and some of its leading articles have so many lines left out of them that the sense is completely gone. This morn- ing the resume of the situation in the Paris edition of the New York Herald has been entirely cut out, leaving the upper left hand corner of the first page blank.1 One can understand and appreciate the reasons for the severity of the military censorship. It is a mistake to suppose that the blanks signify places 1 Since the very first day of the war, the Paris edition of the Herald has been a source of pride and comfort to Americans resi- dent here. It is first with the news, brilliantly edited, and loyal to France in an intelligent as well as fearless way. Always optimis- tic, with an unwavering faith in the armies of France and Great Britain, it was certainly not from the Herald that any American got his reason for becoming a froussard. 328 THE CENSORSHIP AGAIN where information had been printed unfavorable to the French arms. The allied armies are winning: of that we are certain. But the censor is still se- vere. For, though we have no news of defeat to hide, there is still the necessity of preventing the revelation to the enemy of the movements of troops. Suppressing unfavorable news is stupid. Forbid- ding the publication of news that would give the slightest hint to the enemy is wise. The trouble is that the French authorities have not made a clear distinction in their policy. At times it has been dictated by the first consideration, and at others, by the second. So the people are suspicious, in spite of the fact that every straw points to a succession of victories along the whole line of battle. There is a third form of censorship which has been exercised to some extent, and that is, suppress- ing the expression of political opinions. This is a very dangerous game, and yet the Government at Bordeaux has been led into the mistake of adopting it. One may rightly question the good taste of bringing up political issues at the time the enemy is invading the country, but repressive measures against the liberties of the press do not cure this feeling. On the contrary, they aggravate it. The most striking instance of political censor- ship is that which has been directed against M. Clemenceau, the former Premier, who is one 329 PARIS REBORN of the most able political leaders in France. His newspaper, L'Homme Libre (The Free Man), was suspended by a decree from Bordeaux. M. Cle- menceau started another paper which he called L'Homme Moms Libre (The Man Less Free). This paper in turn was suspended on the second day of publication. M. Clemenceau persisted in his ef- fort to get his personal opinions before the public by trying a third time with L'Homme Enchame (The Man in Chains). We have just heard that all the copies of this paper have been seized in the rail- way stations. The result is that every one in Paris wants a copy, and L'Homme Enchame cannot be bought for love or money! 330 XXXVI THE EIFFEL TOWER October fifth. A WEEK ago, when the telegraph boy brought me a little blue slip, he looked at me with contempt and pity when I gave him a franc for a tip. I suppose he went down the stairs shaking his head and muttering, "These Americans!" But if he had known what the three magic words "PARIS DEMAIN MATIN" meant to me, he would not have wondered that I thought the message he brought was worth a franc. I had been warned be- forehand that I might expect good news, for a re- cent letter from the Girl had said: "Germans or no Germans, aeroplanes or no aeroplanes, I am going to bring the children home from St. Jean-du- Doigt. Do you realize that I have had four months of the Brittany coast, and two months of it without you, that newspapers are generally a week old, and that it is getting as cold without as it is within1?" So they came one morning at breakfast time, the Girl and the three babies, Yvonne, the French maid, to whom Paris is as water is to a fish, Dorothy, the 331 PARIS REBORN English nurse, who was seeing Paris before she had seen London, and three cabs full of luggage that the Girl had managed to get through in spite of the formal order limiting travelers these days to one valise per ticket. In their compartment on the train, a French offi- cer, returning to the battle front after recovering from several shrapnel wounds, had expressed his sur- prise that any woman would be taking her children into the city when the Germans were still so near. "Aren't you afraid1?" he asked. "No," answered the Girl. "Why?" "Because I have faith in you and the others who will stand successfully between my children and the Germans !" "I shall fight better for that," he said. And his eyes filled with tears. The Girl would edit this out of my manuscript, claiming that it has nothing to do with Paris during the German invasion, and especially with this chap- ter on the Eiffel Tower. But I do not agree with her. It is not recorded here, because I am proud of the Girl, but because it gives the reason for the successful defense of Paris. There are a hundred thousand women in Paris to- day who feel just as the Girl feels, and who have let their faith be known to the red-trousered heroes in 332 THE EIFFEL TOWER the Argonne, on the Aisne, and in the North from Compiegne to Ostend. Faith is, in the last analy- sis, the source of strength. It is the undaunted spirit behind the line of defense that makes the un- daunted spirit in the line of defense. Then, too, this little story explains why the Girl and I were driving home to-night from a dinner party in Passy. Since the war began I have had no meal with friends except in restaurants. Now that the Girl has come home, the normal life begins again, and I resume wrestling with cuff-links and re- fractory ties. We missed the last Metro 1 after walking the length of the Rue de Passy without meeting a soul on the street. And it was only five minutes after ten! We were saved by a lonely horse cab that came ambling through the Rue Franklin, just as we had made up our minds to a long walk across Paris. After we were in the cab (experience makes the in- habitant of the Montparnasse Quarter wait until he gets in a cab before giving his address) we told the lord of the box where we lived. He groaned and resigned himself. The horse would have groaned still louder had he understood. We had not gone far when we began to doubt whether luck was with us after all: for the horse 1 The underground railway. 333 PARIS REBORN slipped and fell, breaking a bit of the shaft, in front of the Trocadero. It was pitch dark and beginning to rain. I got out to help the cocker. The Girl stayed put. A cab is yours as long as you are in it. Two police- men came up. We unharnessed the horse and tried to urge him to his feet. Several soldiers joined the group. Each of us had his way of doing the trick. Naturally we disagreed. The horse did nothing. He was quite comfortable where he was. While we were engaged for half an hour in this most difficult feat known to the world of horseman- ship, we had ample reason not to regret our mishap. For we had stopped within the military zone, and saw the precautions that were being taken to guard the Eiffel Tower against Zeppelins and other hostile aircraft. In the garden of the Trocadero, behind a pali- sade, vertically-shooting cannon have been placed, and artillerymen are on constant guard throughout the night, following the tireless sweep of the great electric projectors that pierce through the darkness in every direction around the tower. "Since August second we have been stationed here," a soldier told us. "We are ready for the attack when it comes. But two months have passed, and the Germans have not shown them- selves. It isn't very exciting. We got all over 334 THE EIFFEL TOWER that after the first few days. Oh, how we wish they would cornel Here we are en panne, glued to this unholy spot. We feel like the British sailors that are cruising off Heligoland. The Germans don't give us a chance. This is not war." "But there is always hope," put in another cheer- fully. "The raid is bound to come, and if we got changed we would be cursing our luck not to have been in at the defense of the Eiffel Tower." Our horse was on his feet now. They were re- harnessing him, and patching up the broken shaft. The cocker hinted that we might possibly find an- other cab. But there are times when it pays to be a foreigner. It is so easy to pretend that you do not understand. We wanted to get home, and were not foolish enough to abandon our only hope of traveling Montparnasseward. I emptied my cigarette case. We were profuse in our thanks. With mille remerczments to the po- licemen and bonne chance to the soldiers, we re- sumed our journey over the Pont d'lena. Within a mile radius around the Eiffel Tower there was not a single light. That the cocker could find his way was a marvel to us. Perhaps he could n't. We remembered that the stables of the Compagnie Generate des Voitures Parisiennes is just the other side of the Invalides. Was there ever a horse that did not know the way home1? So far, 335 PARIS REBORN so good. And after that we might have the lights again. As we passed under the shadow of the tower, if it can be said to have a shadow at night, the search- lights, meeting lower than their wont or their in- tention, placed before us the outline of the huge steel frame, tapering upward a thousand feet, and surmounted by a flag. "The raid will surely come — why surely?" The Girl was pondering over the confident statement of the soldier. "Is it just the hope of the one who watches, or has he reason for his belief? Why surely?" She had spoken in French. The cocker caught her question. He turned in his seat. The horse, glad of the chance, stopped short. Pointing with his whip toward the tower, the coachman said, "Why not 'surely'? They must know, as we know, that the Eiffel Tower is to-day the hope of Paris, the indomitable symbol of our power to resist and to prevail. See the symbol, M'sieu-dame? It points heavenward. It soars above Paris. It keeps us in communication with the outside world. Let Paris be besieged again! Who knows4? That may come. But it is not as in 1870. Then we were dependent upon carrier pigeons and balloons. Now, come what may, Paris can flash out to the 336 THE EIFFEL TOWER provinces the message that all is well, and that vic- tory is sure. More than that, it is the Eiffel Tower that enables us to give the lie to the German bulle- tins. It is our mouth: they cannot shut it. It is the voice of France : they cannot drown it." The cocker paused to push back on his head as nearly straight as it ever could be placed there the oilcloth hat which had almost fallen off during the emphatic nods that punctuated every sentence of his oration. "And do you know, M'sieu-dame, that some fool architects have long been urging that we take down the Eiffel Tower because it is not, in their opinion, artistic? We shall never hear that talk again!" The horse started. The cocker said no more. Nor did we. 339 XXXVII RED CROSS AND RECLAME October sixth. RED CROSS work in Paris has been disappoint- ing. At the beginning of the war a great fuss was made by the fair dames of Paris of all nation- alities. Ambulances were organized by "society women," and palatial private homes were offered to house them. Red Cross was "le chic." Thousands volunteered, with the best will in the world, for nursing. Training classes sprang up in every quar- ter. Women abandoned their vocations and came back to Paris to attend these courses and to enlist in this work. There was enthusiasm in subscribing and collecting money and in getting fitted out in Red Cross uniforms. It is an old axiom that the Parisiennes look well in anything. The rather forbidding uniform of the hospital nurse was deftly changed into what we had to admit was a "ravishing" costume. Everywhere one met them, these ladies of the Red Cross, always dressed in uniform, and generally riding about in automobiles de luxe, which flew the Geneva flag, and were driven by attractive youths en soldat. 340 RED CROSS AND RECLAME At first, the military authorities declared that they would probably bring no wounded to Paris, and that, if they did, the public hospitals, and the am- bulances organized on a large scale by the central organizations of the Red Cross Society, would prove more than sufficient. But the fair dames persisted in organizing, and in planning the equipment of private ambulances, until — It is not a very pretty story, but it must be told. The Red Cross was a fad to most of the rich and idle society women. The exceptions were very few. Butterflies could not be in earnest, even at a time like this. When it came to a question of definite service, under discipline, many of the fair dames dropped out. When the Germans approached Paris, those who had persevered fled from the city to wait for the wounded at Biarritz and Pau ! It is true that there is no crying need for volun- teer aid. Not many wounded have been brought to Paris. But if the Germans had succeeded in the Battle of the Marne and if they had attacked Paris, the Minister of War would have needed to call upon all these private ambulances. Where would he have found their personnel? Our own American Ambulance is an example of this. Generously fitted out on the scale in which all things American are done, it was planned to ac- commodate at first two hundred beds, and, if nec- 341 PARIS REBORN essary, up to one thousand. The ladies of the American Colony were invited to volunteer for serv- ice at the American Hospital. A great number reg- istered. They came dressed in their best frocks and hats. The physician-in-charge was business-like from the beginning. Perhaps he knew his audience only too well. He told them that the ambulance would give a blessed opportunity for service, but that it meant strict discipline and the ability to do cheerfully disagreeable work. "I want women," he said, "who would come at eight o'clock in the morning and stick to the job all day long, and who can be counted upon to come every day." After the physician had finished, the ladies were invited to register. "I can come every day from two to four," said one. "I could never get away out here before ten in the morning," said another. " I '11 come afternoons," said a third. "I can come mornings, but must leave at half past eleven," said a fourth. And so it went. Out of the eager throng of but- terflies, one could count on the fingers of his hands the women really willing to make a sacrifice to serve. The American Ambulance employs nearly fifty trained nurses, and has a hard time to get enough 342 RED CROSS AND RECLAME patients to fill its beds. It is better so, of course. No untrained woman, with all the good will in the world, can do the work of a trained nurse. But what if we had our thousand in the American Am- bulance*? What if the whole city were filled with wounded — ten thousand coming in at one time, as I saw at Constantinople, after the battle of Lule Burgas'?1 I can answer. There would be plenty of women to give all the loving care necessary to our heroes of the battle-fields. But they would not be the women who paraded around here in Red Cross uni- forms during the first days of the mobilization, who rode importantly through the streets in their auto- 1 In what is written here not the slightest criticism of the splen- did work of the American Ambulance is intended. I am speaking of volunteers at the beginning of the war who did not "material- ize." When I say that the beds were not full, it must be remem- bered that I am writing of the month of September, when every private Red Cross enterprise was denied the privilege of caring for the number of wounded that could have been accommodated. Since the date of this letter, the American Ambulance has had all its beds filled, and its physicians and nurses and orderlies, many of them volunteers and unpaid, have shown a skill and devotion, and have accomplished a work, of which the American nation has just reason to be proud. The perfection of the equipment of the Amer- ican Ambulance, and the remarkable skill of its surgeons, came gradually to be recognized by the French and British military authorities, who have paid us the compliment of sending there the most desperately wounded and the most hopelessly maimed. Many hundreds of unfortunates owe their lives and an alleviation of their disfigurement and lifelong disability to the American Am- bulance. 343 PARIS REBORN mobiles, and busily talked about raising money and forming ambulances over their teacups. The real Red Cross worker does not couple her work with the thought of advertisement or of di- version. But then the real Red Cross worker is not the typical society woman. There is an interesting story from Russia that illustrates the spirit desired for Red Cross work and the difficulty in getting volunteers who show that spirit. Grand Duke Nicholas, Commander of the Rus- sian army in Poland, is said to have passed recently in review a corps of a hundred women who had vol- unteered to follow the army in the field ambulances. But he did not need that many. How choose among them? A happy thought came to him. He said, "I would like to know how many of you are willing to volunteer for the work of devoting yourselves exclusively to the care of wounded offi- cers'?" Sixty of the hundred immediately stepped out. The Grand Duke waved them aside. "Red Cross work knows no distinction between friend and enemy, between rich and poor, between high and low," he told them. "It is a work of hu- manity, to be carried on most effectively by those whose one and sole thought is the alleviation of hu- man suffering. Who it is that is suffering, and why 344 RED CROSS AND RECLAME he is suffering has nothing whatever to do with this work. I shall take to the front with me the forty women who do not care to devote themselves ex- clusively to officers." 345 XXXVIII THE TAUBEN RETURN October twelfth. STRANGE how different things really are from what they are reported to be," said the Girl. "I wish I had made a collection of all the stories I heard at St. Jean-du-Doigt about what was going on in Paris. Of course, I did not believe any of them, even when people swore to me that they were true. I remembered Constantinople when the Bul- garians were at Tchataldja. How we used to laugh at what they were writing, when newspapers came from home! People were so persistent, though, this summer, that I was glad I had your letters to back up my denial of their readily-ac- cepted canards. And now I have been home for almost two weeks. I find Paris just as usual, ex- cept that so many people are still away from town and that the musical and theatrical season has not yet opened. But then we are hardly in October yet!" We were taking a Sunday afternoon walk up the Boulevard Raspail and the Avenue d'Orleans to 346 THE TAUBEN RETURN Montrouge. There I showed the Girl the elaborate preparations that had been made to defend Paris against a sudden raid of Uhlans or armored auto- mobiles. Everything was just as it was a month ago when the Germans were at Chantilly and Meaux. No, on a thorough examination, I saw that the defenses had been greatly improved since then. Freshly turned earth indicated that workmen were still being used in executing new schemes of de- fense. This is an indication of something I had never noticed before in the French character, and some- thing I had often noticed the absence of. It is what a psychologist would call continuity of effort in measures of prevention. The French wake up to a sudden calamity, to a sudden contingency against the occurrence of which they had not pro- vided. While the calamity is upon them, while the contingency presses them hard and embarrasses them, they are full of energy, and spend themselves in persistent and plucky efforts to ward off the ap- proaching danger, or to face it when it has already come upon them. But once the danger over, they are quick to forget, and easily persuaded to aban- don their work of defense and prevention. There is a lot of talk for a few weeks about "taking steps." It ends there. "Are they still working for the defense of Paris'?" 347 PARIS REBORN asked the Girl incredulously. "How is it pos- sible?" "Yes," I answered, pointing to a ditch with my cane. "That earth has certainly not been turned more than twenty-four hours." We looked at each other, and laughed. "Well of all things!" the Girl exclaimed. "The French have a new light." There was no need for words. We were both thinking of that awful flood five years ago, in some ways much more of a disaster to Paris than the German Invasion of 1914. What wonderful hero- ism was shown in the face of a calamity that no earthly power seemed able to stave off! That memorable Friday afternoon at the Place de la Concorde, that Friday night on the quai between the Pont Neuf and the Pont des Saints-Peres when soldiers and civilians were making dikes and build- ing up the parapets with bags of cement — how they did fight the water! And then, when the flood re- ceded, Paris began to think of the new Rostand play, Chantecler. Nothing has been done since then to guard against another flood. Right in this very year itself, less than two months before the outbreak of the war, we were at the Sa- lon one afternoon, when a heavy thunderstorm broke over Paris. The interminable diggings all over Paris for extensions of the subway system were flooded. 348 THE TAUBEN RETURN A few hundred feet from the Grand Palais, small boys coming from choir practice at Saint-Philippe- du-Roule were swallowed up; a taxicab crossing in front of Saint Augustin disappeared in the ground; in front of Raoul's shoestore on the comer of the Boulevard Haussmann and the Rue de Havre a kiosque and some pedestrians fell into the subway. In many other parts of Paris the earth opened up. Something must be done ! That was the eight days' cry. And then came the Caillaux trial. Do you wonder that the Girl and I were surprised to see that Paris is still thinking of its defenses, after the Germans have fallen back across the Aisne*? Is it possible that for the Parisians a danger past is not a danger forgotten*? We climbed up on the outer mound of the fortifi- cations beyond the moat, and walked around toward a little trou of a gate, known only to those who are accustomed to roam in this quarter, where one can get through to the Pare Montsouris. "Another illustration !" I cried, pointing eastward toward the sky. It was one of the tireless sentinels of the air whose duty it is to protect us from a re- turn of the German aviators. But no! My arm fell. Could it be4? I had never seen one, but I did not think I could be mistaken. For who in Paris had not been poring over the models of aero- planes in U Illustration and other journals'? 349 PARIS REBORN "It looks to me like an Aviatik" I said. Others had stopped and were gazing heaven- ward. The aeroplane passed over us. No doubt of it! Simultaneously the cry went up, "Les Boches!" They had come again! But had they*? We walked to the Pare Mont- souris, and down that wonderful slope by the Oriental Pavilion where one sees all Paris before him. The day was clear. No sign of clouds. No specks in the air that might be birds of human mak- ing. The Aviatik, if it was one, had gone. The Sunday crowd in the park was not thinking of aero- planes. We must have been mistaken. We turned homeward through the Rue de la Sante, a street reminiscent of Jean Valjean, where one sees the suburban Paris of Louis Philippe, when unpretentious private houses with a bit of garden were the order of the day. No Baron Haussmann has ever turned his attention to this quarter of Paris. No subway has caused the rise of apart- ment houses following the rise of land. As we walked along, thinking it would be ideal to live in one of these real houses, if only there were some quick means of communication with "the world" (how narrow and insular we city folks are without realizing it!), we heard the unmistakable whirr of a propeller. Before we had time to look 350 Sf^feV^fe -vi ••;.-:-' ,.',- A- In the Garden of the Luxembourg. The usual happy, care-free Sunday afternoon crowd THE TAUBEN RETURN up, several shots rang out. The street was deserted. Our portion of the sky seemed to be deserted, too. But we still heard that whirr. Then appeared the cause of it, a bare hundred feet above us, the most beautiful of aeroplanes, a Taube. A man was look- ing down. We could see his goggles. He had something in his hand. Was he going to throw a bomb*? Just as suddenly as it had come, the aeroplane disappeared. We hurried towards the nearest open space on the Boulevard St. Jacques. The Germans had gone. We had seen two German aeroplanes. How had they been able to reach Paris on this remarkably clear Sunday afternoon1? Had they dropped bombs anywhere"? We thought of our three babies in the Luxembourg Garden. The first question was lost in the compelling apprehension of the sec- ond. Ten minutes later, we were looking among the thousand baby carriages for our own. It was the usual, happy, care-free Sunday afternoon crowd in the Luxembourg. Children were playing Diabolo and tennis, rolling hoops and sailing boats. The Old Guard were as intent as usual upon their cro- quet. No signs at all of perturbation. Had the aeroplanes flown over the Luxembourg*? The question was answered for us by our eldest child. She spied us as we climbed the steps of the 353 PARIS REBORN parterre towards the Guignol, and came running to- wards us. "Oh, Mamma, oh, Papa," she greeted us. "Why did n't you come before*? Do you know, there were three big German birds here, and the French birds came and chased them away. They were naughty birds, they were. But oh, it was such fun !" Following close upon Christine's heels, Dorothy, our English nursemaid, pushing a baby carriage with one hand and holding Lloyd with the other, con- firmed Christine's story. "It was very exciting," she said, laughing. And Lloyd broke in. "The French birds chased them — yes, they did!" When I opened my Temps this evening, I read that there have been five German aeroplanes over Paris to-day. They dropped a number of bombs, one of them on the roof of Notre Dame. Many people were killed. "In the midst of life we are in death." True, isn't it*? But Paris, having been born on a sunny day, cannot help looking upon the sunny side. One may express a contrast in such a way as to bring de- spair and hopelessness. But one may also express it with terms reversed, and get just the opposite re- sult. Paris says, "In the midst of death we are in life." So we are. "But the French birds came and chased them 354 THE TAUBEN RETURN away" said Christine. And Lloyd echoed her. That was, after all, the important thing. It is be- cause my babies are the product of their atmosphere, that Christine put this clause at the end of the sen- tence, and that Lloyd echoed it. The impression on their mind was not that the terrible Tauben had come, but that they were chased away ! Paris is peopled with Christines and Lloyds. 355 XXXIX WINTER CLOTHING FOR THE PIOU-PIOUS October twenty-first. IT is getting cold in France. The principal thought of the nation is how to clothe the mil- lion and a half soldiers in the field. The wet and the cold expose the men to a danger as great as that of the enemy's fire. A soldier can carry in his knapsack hardly more than his blanket and one change of underclothing. He marched away under a summer sun, the little piou-piou, as he is affection- ately called,1 so he is not provided with proper cloth- ing for what now looms up as a winter campaign. The headline that greets you every day on the front page of the newspapers is : "Send woolly things to the soldiers." This exhortation is unnecessary. I have often wondered at the industry of French peasant women. 1 It is over a century since die soldiers of the line were first called Piou-pious. The word had its origin in a change of uni- form for the infantry. They were given a sort of clown's costume •with a ruffle around their neck like a sparrow's ruff. When the Parisians saw them for the first time, they called piou-piou, imi- tating sparrows. The term, first used in derision, has now come to signify deep affection and tenderness. 356 WINTER CLOTHING FOR THE PIOU-PIOUS In every hamlet you will find three generations knit- ting between tasks. The inevitable ball of yarn occupies rheumatic fingers and baby fingers as well. The old motto that the secret of the wealth of France and the fruit of her industry is in the stock- ing would read with as much force if that last word were plural ! A great city makes for idleness among the poor as well as among the rich. There are many housewives of country origin in Paris that have lost not only the bloom on the cheek but also the nimbleness of fingers that used to add pennies to the family horde at all hours of day and night. But during the past week rusty needles have come out of forgotten corners, and a hundred thousand who have never used needles before have bought sets. For knitting is now the national occupation of the army at home. Frosty days and nights have come. Practically every woman has a son or a husband — often both — sleeping and fighting in the open air, exposed to the rain and wind of these cold autumn nights. Loving hands have been busy. On the street, at the door, in tramways, in cabs, in luxurious automobiles, beside the huckster pushcart, the women are knitting to-day. There is an under- shirt, probably several, for every soldier. But the difficulty is to get these stitches of love to the loved one. As with the wounded, so it is with the mail. 357 PARIS REBORN The organization of the service between the battle- fields and the capital has broken down completely. You mail your package to your man at the front, pay full postage for it, and it has to go first to the garrison town where his regiment was mustered into active service. For example, it may be that you live in Paris, but are originally from Marseilles. Your man has been mustered in at Marseilles. Al- though you know that he is shivering fifty miles away, your package has to go six hundred miles to Marseilles and come six hundred miles back to Paris, and then it is officially ready to go to the front. Multiply this one case by hundreds of thousands of cases, and we see how the postal administration stands. Since the beginning of the war, there has been exactly the same regulation for letters. The anxious wife or mother writes every day to her loved one at the front. The letters travel all over France and back again, and perhaps after a month or six weeks, if the one to whom they are addressed is still alive, he may possibly receive a few of them! To-night it will be as it is every night when I go to mail my letters. At our branch post-office, I stand in line before the one window for registered matter. In front of me, behind me, are the women with their packages. For most of them the con- tents,— even the one or two francs of postage — means a real sacrifice in times like these. If only 358 WINTER CLOTHING FOR THE PIOU-PIOUS they could feel certain that the sacrifice would meet the reward of the package reaching the man in the trenches! Every time I stand in that line I hear some little women asking the gruff clerk behind the window when the package is likely to reach its destination. His answer is invariably a growl. But they pay and hope. The receipt they are given for the registration is a scrap of paper, at which, if ever one were bold enough to come back to make a claim for non-delivery, the post-office clerk would look as von Bethmann-Hollweg looked at the treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. If this were only all that the army at home has to endure! But they have also the fear that govern- mental initiative is failing to cope with the problem of winter clothing for the piou-pious, owing to the same incompetence in the supply department of the Ministry of War as that in the post-office ad- ministration. I have heard this fear expressed a hundred times in almost the same words. "If they do not succeed in getting my package to my soldier, are they capable of supplying him from the depot, par exemple?" The bureaucrats who sit at their desks in the min- istries, and year in and year out follow the dull routine of advertising for bids for certain supplies, passing upon the bids, and seeing that the goods or- dered are paid for and sent to garrisons, are aghast 359 PARIS REBORN at, and entirely unfit to cope with, the proposition of a million and a half new winter overcoats. In- deed, at different points along a hundred and fifty miles of battle-field, positions are changed every day with the varying fortunes of war. This is no time for routine. And yet, these poor creatures, of limited mentality, continue to exercise their func- tions and vainly try to rise to the situation. The only way the French Government could properly and adequately and quickly give to the army the clothing it needs for the winter would be to call temporarily into the administration the head of some great department store. There are men in Paris to-day who could go into the Ministry of War and look at an order for five hundred thousand over- coats to be delivered in two weeks just as they would at an order for a single cake of soap. They would refuse to think of anything else but the one thing, "How soon can I get those overcoats on the backs of the soldiers'?" Telegraph and cable wires would flash messages, here, there, and everywhere. They would scour the world to find the materials and the workmen for making these overcoats. And they would get them. As soon as they got them, they would see, in spite of red tape, that they reached the soldiers in the field — wherever "the field" happened to be. Of course executive ability of this kind — whose 360 WINTER CLOTHING FOR THE PIOU-PIOUS possessors have deservedly made great fortunes — cannot be commanded by a government bureau. But in times of war, such men would be glad to step in and give to the country a service that would be equal to that rendered by generals of armies. But they are not called. The soldiers are left to shiver. 361 XL THE BOY SCOUTS October twenty-third. NOTICE has been given that the University of Paris will open as usual next month, and that lycees, secondary schools, and primary schools in Paris are resuming their courses. Some teachers have gone to the front. But it is astonishing how many men over fifty, eager for work, rise up from cover to seek places as substitute teachers! Every large city is full of them. Paris has more than enough. The problem of reopening schools is not in find- ing teachers. The hesitation has been on account of the pupils. Where are they? Only the older university men are in the army: boy volunteering has not been allowed as yet. Most of the froussard families will soon be returning. For it is getting very cold in the country, and very dull. Those who fled from the Germans might endure the cold rather than return to the fear of bombs. But what Paris- ian can long suffer dullness? Better death. Where, then, are the boys? They are Scouts, 362 THE BOY SCOUTS and they do not want to give up this fascinating work to go back to school. That is the prob- lem. From the first day of the war we began to see on the streets of Paris the boys who had donned the uniform that has become known all over the world since General Baden-Powell conceived his brilliant idea ten years ago. The movement, already ini- tiated here, has spread wonderfully since August. At first, the Boy Scouts were considered as a joke. Their elders were amused at the way the boys "played at war." But the boys soon showed that they were in earnest, and that they could be of real service. They made a place for themselves in our civil and military administrations. When, in August and September, successive classes of men were called under the colors, we learned that very many of them were not indis- pensable. Their places in home industries, in fac- tories, in shops, and in public service corporations, upon whose continued activity the economic life — that minimum necessary for existence — is depend- ent, were filled immediately by mothers, wives, and daughters. God bless the women! There will be a lot of men eating humble pie after this war. In spheres of activity, where women and girls are hardly suitable, the boys found that they were able to replace grown men. In uniform, and convinced 363 PARIS REBORN that they are serving in the active army, the Boy Scouts have been filling an amazingly useful part in the life of France. The Boy Scouts are patrolling the railways. For moving up and down the tracks and keeping an eye on rails, on culverts and on the unimportant bridges, the boys are better than the older reservists whom they have replaced. Their legs are nimbler and their eyes quicker. They carry newspapers and let- ters on motor-cycles from cities to the base camps of the armies. In garrison towns they are marmi- tons, preparing meats and vegetables in the casernes for the regimental mess. They render this same sort of service in the cantines, where the refugees and the poor of the city gather to be fed. With the help of the Boy Scouts to run errands and serve the food, two or three women are able to manage a large cantine. The Boy Scouts are messengers for the ministries and embassies and legations. One sees them going back and forth through the streets, carrying mes- sages and letters too important or too urgent to be entrusted to the post. A Cabinet Minister recently received a large sum for the decoration of the graves of soldiers in the Paris cemeteries. He wondered how it would be possible to utilize this money for the purpose intended by the donor. He thought of the Boy Scouts. By the dozens they visited the 364 THE BOY SCOUTS florists of Paris, bought up all the flowers, and car- ried them to the cemeteries on their bicycles. Their most valuable service, the most indispensa- ble and the most difficult, has been in the care of the wounded in hospitals and at railway stations. In September, Paris could not have done its duty by the wounded who were poured into the city had there been no organized Boy Scouts. Many a soldier owes his life to them. They were always at the trains with stretchers. They did not tire of carry- ing burdens too heavy for their undeveloped backs and arms. Orderlies were lacking in the hospitals. The Boy Scouts saved overworked nurses and phy- sicians many a step. But now we are accustomed to the war, and its exigencies can be met without the help of the Boy Scouts. In a great city like Paris, there are bound to be more helpers than there are jobs, even when the bulk of the men are withdrawn for the army. The economic life of the city has adjusted itself to changed conditions, and plenty who need work are seeking it. The Boy Scouts do not want to give up, though. They reason that they have enlisted for the length of the war, and must not quit. Parents are begin- ning to be embarrassed and annoyed. They do not feel so kindly towards General Baden-Powell's bril- liant idea. It is difficult to get the boys back to 365 PARIS REBORN school. The Scouts disdain the idea of being school- boys again. They are doing a more useful, and more noble work, they maintain. But parents in France have a way of enforcing obedience. The war is over for the Boy Scouts. They yield with poor grace. After all, it is hard for them to believe what the Minister of Public Instruction tells them, that "diligent attention to studies is the best way in which boys can prepare themselves to serve the nation." PREPARE to serve the nation? What does the Minister think they have been doing these three months past*? A Boy Scout whom I love comes to me this even- ing, and pours out his heart. He wants sympathy and encouragement to resist the call back to books. I have to disappoint him, and I make the mistake of trying to work off the Minister's arguments on him. He eyes me with amazement. Amazement changes to disgust. "You belong to the conspiracy against the Boy Scouts!" he cries. "And I thought you were our friend!" "Well, I am a father myself, you know," I an- swered lamely. "Say, I'd forgotten that. Never mind, you can't help it. I suppose it's the Lycee Montaigne for me to-morrow." 366 THE BOY SCOUTS He grins, and holds out a pardoning hand. After I have shut the door, I can hear him whistling his way down the stairs. 367 XLI JUSQU'AU BOUT October twenty-ninth. THE news from the great battle in the north, unless the official communiques are mislead- ing us, indicates that the Germans have failed in their last supreme effort to surround and destroy the armies that have stood between them and a tri- umphal entry into Paris. There is nothing left now for the Germans but to retreat step by step from the invaded departments of France and from Bel- gium, until they have re-crossed the Rhine. But there are two reasons why Paris is not re- joicing, in spite of the good news. In the first place, the victory has been purchased at too dear a price. The British and Germans have published their lists of killed and wounded and prisoners. The French have not. The invader has been re- pulsed, but we do not yet know the cost. We can only suspect. Most of the families in Paris fear that they ought to be wearing mourning for loved ones. In the second place, driving the enemy out of France is only the first, and perhaps not the great- 368 JUSQU'AU BOUT est, phase of this awful war. Every one knows that a greater effort remains yet to be made than has al- ready been called for, or than is being called for hi the present still defensive operations. The German superiority in men of military age is so great, in spite of the fact that they are fighting the Russians on the East, that their losses have not meant so much up to this point to them as to the French. For carrying the war into the enemy's country, France will need fresh forces, and France will have to make fresh sacrifices. The spirit of Paris to-day is one of wistful de- termination. The war is not over. The peace which ends it must be decisive. As the Jesuit Father expressed it to me yesterday, "If we do not do more than drive the Germans out of France and restore Belgium to our plucky little allies, our suc- cess will be a delusion. We must break the military power of Germany, or we shall have to live again under the terrible nightmare of 1870, to which will have been added the nightmare of 1914" This opinion of the seriousness and the long dura- tion of the effort that must be made to crush Ger- many is shared by the British. The British Gen- eral Staff, and the various military services of the British army, have leased buildings in Paris for three years. So it is that I see in the morning, when I am go- 369 PARIS REBORN ing to my office at eight o'clock, the boys of Paris marching through the streets with sticks for guns on their way to drill in the Luxembourg. For an hour before school the boys of the classes of 1916 and 1917 are getting ready to take the places of those who have fallen on the Marne, the Aisne, and in the North. The class of 1914 has already been called out. The class of 1915 is impatiently await- ing its summons. Jusqitau bout! To the bitter end France in- tends to fight. But the price of victory will make 1915 the bloodiest year of history. How much better if France had awakened years ago to the perils of the future, and had advocated a law of three children in each family rather than a law of three years' military service. Then this war would not have been, for Germany would never have dared to risk it. XLII VERS LA GLOIRE! October thirtieth. THE Girl and I came up from the river through the Rue Saint-Genevieve this afternoon, and went into Saint Etienne-du-Mont. The women whom the Girl is hunting are frequently to be found in churches these days. If they go anywhere, it is only to God. You have to seek them out. Around the Tomb of Clovis there were many can- dles but no worshipers. Saint Genevieve had her devotees, but not in such large numbers as last month. No one is thinking any more about the Germans coming to Paris, and, as has always been the case since the world began, we do not pray much to those of whose peculiar blessing we feel no need. To most people praying is asking. We do not ask unless we want. But Saint Antoine-de-Padua was in great demand, and in the chapel of the Virgin no place was vacant. It was not Our Lady of Vic- tories that was being invoked, but Our Lady Pro- tectress of Soldiers. When we left the church, and skirted around the 371 PARIS REBORN Pantheon to pass through the Rue Soufflot, we no- ticed that a door of the Pantheon was open. We entered. The crowd was different from any that we had ever seen in the temple "of a grateful country to her sons." Ordinarily tourists and Parisians, min- gled promiscuously, make the rounds of the mural paintings that depict the history of France and Paris, one and indivisible. With gay laughter and keen interest in the work of Puvis de Chavannes and others, they are moved by artistic sentiment or his- toric imagination to outspoken admiration and com- ment. This afternoon there were no tourists. There was no laughter and no enthusiasm. The people seemed to have come just for something to do. Their conversation was not of France and her past and present glory, but of sons and brothers and fathers who were "out there." This vague term has become common parlance since the war began, be- cause there is no other that can be used. None knows where loved ones are, or even if there are loved ones still. Fighting, wounded, prisoners, dead — which? Who knows? Some who had come home were there this after- noon. A splendid boy not more than twenty years old was leaning on his crutches in front of the pic- ture of Attila, thinking perhaps of the Kaiser, and 372 TteNt In the quarter of the Pantheon VERS LA GLOIRE! whether he was really to blame for the leg that had been lost. Refugees from the North were visit- ing the Pantheon for the first time, standing before the scenes of devastation and massacre of the fifth century. Did the paintings awaken last month's memories of the twentieth century counterpart through which they themselves had lived? Before we had gone half way round, a feeling of depression gave us the common impulse to get out into the open air. The Pantheon may be inspiring in the time of peace. In time of war it is too rem- iniscent of the hell in which we are living. As I turned toward the door, the Girl took my arm and led me up what ought to be chancel steps to the altarless apse. There we saw a contrast, Detaille's group Vers la Gloire! on the wall, and a group before the picture which showed us the result of that unholy aspiration which has misguided not only France but the world. A young woman in mourning was holding a baby in her arms. At her skirts three other children were clutching. She looked with unseeing eyes at Detaille's masterpiece. Near her two soldiers, one with his arm in a sling, and the other with a face that had been horribly dis- figured by the bursting of a shell, were gazing apa- thetically at the imaginary soldiers of France win- ning imaginary glory. We could not read the woman's mind. We could not hear the soldiers' 375 PARIS REBORN words. But I think our guess was not far from the mark. "Did he die for glory"? Is this the glory that he won — my babies and I — our broken life4?" she must have been thinking. "Put the artist who made that picture, the writers who have glorified that ideal, and the politicians who have caused this war into the trenches where we were, and let them face life maimed as we are — is it glory1?" they were probably saying. "There is no glory in it. It has been a lie — it is a lie!" The Girl was almost sobbing, as we brushed by the legless soldier into the open. But she didn't sob — not quite. For she had other things to think about. She took from her pocket the list of twenty odd women whose hus- bands are at the war, who are expecting babies, and who have no money for nourishing the children al- ready born — let alone buying clothes for the new- comer. She looked up the nearest address on the list. We left behind us the Pantheon and Detaille's conception, and went to find the next victim of glory! 376 XLIII RED CROSS AND RED TAPE November tenth. OH, that some Florence Nightingale would arise in France to break down the bars of profes- sional jealousy and official red tape, so that those who are giving so freely their lives might receive the loving care that is their due when they are wounded on- the battle-field ! Without exception, the newspapers of the French capital have taken up this question. They have spoken as freely as the censor would allow them, and have bitterly contrasted the inefficiency of the Serv- ice de Sante Militaire with the admirable arrange- ments they claimed were made by their British allies. It has now come to light that conditions in the British army in regard to treatment of the wounded are not a bit better than they were at the time of the Crimean War. There is the same fatal clash between army surgeons and civil surgeons, between the Royal Army Medical Corps and the many en- 377 PARIS REBORN terprises of a private character that have been try- ing in vain to cooperate in the care of the wounded. Ten days ago, I heard from an officer who re- turned from the front heartrending stories of the complete breakdown of the medical service at Dun- kirk, Calais, and Boulogne. He spoke of the hos- pitals and field ambulances as a disgrace to civiliza- tion. What he told me seemed incredible. But since then I have had it from so many different sources that I can no longer doubt that the British army surgeons have been as criminally negligent as those of the French army. It seems that the British wounded have been piled into the hospitals of the Royal Army Medical Corps by the thousands, that they have been allowed to remain for days with their bandages untouched, and that the condition of these ambulances is one of un- speakable filth. The reason of all this is the lack of surgeons, nurses, and orderlies. After waiting in agony for days, many of the wounded have been sent to England, or have died. There is, of course, no people in the world, not even excepting the Americans, who are so generous and so willing and so capable in the organization of relief as the British. Huge sums have been given for Red Cross work in England. The volun- teers for field work, amongst whom are highly skilled 378 RED CROSS AND RED TAPE physicians and splendidly trained nurses, have reached the thousands. Ambulances, with the per- sonnel and the supplies necessary for caring for an unlimited number of wounded, have come from Lon- don to Paris. Some of the finest hotels on the Champs-Elysees have been fitted up into British auxiliary hospitals. But at no time since the war started have they been filled. Most of the phy- sicians and nurses have sat around waiting vainly for the opportunity of serving. While the British Tommies are dying in the trenches, or are heaped up in the improvised hospitals of the R. A. M. C, those who are willing and anxious to care for them have been systematically ignored, or, if they insisted upon pushing themselves into the army circles, have been unmercifully snubbed. Some time ago I heard a prominent French phy- sician, whose surgical skill is second to none in Paris, say that when he offered his services he was received as if he had come to borrow five francs ! The mentality and the callous caste idea and the rigid red tape of the British medical service is un- believable. Train loads of British wounded have been brought right to the gates of Paris, have waited for hours in surburban stations, and then have pulled out again for parts unknown, while the British Red Cross hospitals at the Astoria, Claridge's, the Ma- 379 PARIS REBORN jestic, etc, could have taken them all in had they only been given the opportunity. The other day a young Knglishman1 a graduate of Oxford University, who is here as a volunteer in an ambulance of a hundred physicians, dressers, nurses, and orderlies, dined with us. He said that the ambulance to which he belonged had been fitted out lavishly by a wealthy peeress in London, and that its physicians were men of wide reputation. They had been waiting in a Paris hotel for nearly four weeks to get permission to go to the front. They are waiting still, and the wounded are dying. Shades of Scutari! In both armies, as well as in the Red Cross socie- ties, the same evils of mismanagement — inefficiency, jealous desire to refuse volunteer aid for fear of sharing the glory, and self-assumed importance of workers enrolled — are revealed again as we have seen them in former wars. Among the army sur- geons, there is that same unwillingness to cooperate with civilians that Florence Nightingale struggled against in the Crimean War. Hospitals in Paris are waiting for their wounded. Physicians and nurses are ready. Large sums have been expended. But the wounded do no: come. Is it mat the battles are less severe than they were a few weeks ago? Is it that the Government still fears the possible capture of Paris, and the passing 3*0 RED CROSS AND RED TAPE into the hands of the Germans of all the wounded, as prisoners of war? From the accounts of those who come from the front, the battles seem to be just as fierce as ever, and from many signs one has reason to believe that the Government does not fear any immediate advance upon Paris. It is the old question of red tape, and of official and professional jealousy, and rivalry. There are plenty of wounded. But willing hands and hearts are not allowed to be of service in alleviating their suffering. Men are still dying without proper medi- cal attention, with physicians and nurses only a few miles away, willing to risk life to carry to the sol- diers on the battle-field competent and skilful care. When this war is over, perhaps before it is over, the medical corps of the contending armies will be called upon to answer embarrassing Questions. Hu- man ingenuity, so diabolically successful in destroy- ing human life, should be exercised with equal suc- cess in solving the problems of saving human life during military operations. 381 XLIV THE FROUSSARDS COME HOME November fifteenth. WERE it not so awfully funny, it would be pitiful to listen to one's friends who are re- turning in increasing numbers from London, from Bordeaux, from Marseilles, and from Switzerland. When you meet them in church, at the club, in the cafe, on the boulevard, of course you act as if they had never been away from town at all. But some evil spirit compels them to bring up the subject themselves. You have to listen. And, as there is an anxious questioning note in their voice, you have to agree that they were called away during the first week of September by urgent business in London, that they had to go to Havre or Marseilles because they could not risk, in their line, being cut off from cable and mail communication with the outside world, or that their presence at Bordeaux was indis- pensable to the national safety. The Government could not have got along without them. Certainly not! Then there were those who had not the excuse of 382 THE FROUSSARDS COME HOME business. In the first week of September they yielded to an irresistible longing to taste good old roast beef, "for you know the French can't cook a roast." Now they are coming back from England, having discovered that the English "never do give you vegetables other than perfectly naked boiled potatoes and water-logged cabbage." But the reason for the September exit from Paris and the November exit from London is neither in business nor in food. When you get down to rocks, it is — the Germans. How one feels about the Germans is largely a matter of imagination. I have come to this con- clusion after much puzzling over the actions of many Parisians. If a man is all the time imagining that a bomb is going to drop from an aeroplane right on top of his head, or that the shells from the Ger- man siege guns will explode in his immediate vi- cinity, he cannot be blamed for feeling uneasy. It is altogether natural that nervous and excitable peo- ple should get away from the possible danger of a bombardment. They got away from Paris because they feared that the Germans would bombard this city. They are getting away from London now and back to Paris because they think that the German effort has been diverted from Paris to London. The burden of their conversation is no longer the irresistible horde of barbarians at Compiegne, Chan- 383 PARIS REBORN tilly, and Meaux, but the Zeppelins that are being manufactured at Brussels and Antwerp, and the one hundred and twenty-five submarines that are going to send the British fleet to the bottom of the sea. So Paris is pretty good after all. One may not have control of his nerves, and may yield to the panic of his imagination. That is per- fectly comprehensible. We are not all built the same way. And who is more contemptible than the man who boasts of a moral superiority which is due entirely to physical causes'? But there are many froussards who have not the excuse — the perfectly valid excuse — of neurasthenia. Have they not fallen short in civic duty, in pa- triotism, by showing a lack of faith in those who were defending their homes? The panic-stricken crossed bridges before they came to them. They accepted as a certain future event what was only a remote possibility. Where they could not be blamed for fearing that the bombs would hit them, they could be blamed for not hav- ing faith in the ability of the defending armies to keep the siege guns from getting near enough to send their shells into the streets of Paris. Where there was lack of faith two months ago in the allied armies, there is lack of faith to-day in the British fleet, and in the armies on the Yser. The froussards are coming back! It is a curious 384 THE FROUSSARDS COME HOME sight. We saw them madly piling into freight trains, after having waited forty-eight hours in line to purchase first-class tickets. We saw them leav- ing in autos, in wagons, in river boats, for which they paid fabulous prices. They were inextricably mixed up with their baggage, enjoying emigrant ac- commodation at millionaire prices. It was a case of sauve qui pent. For the Germans were coming to Paris, and they had no desire either to feed on cats and dogs and horses * and rats, or to sit in their cellars while the shells burst overhead. Now they are coming back ! In the railway stations two opposing floods meet each other. The refugees from Amiens, Com- piegne, Chantilly, Senlis, Soissons, and Meaux are going home; the refugees from Paris are coming home. But the former are different from the lat- ter. Those who are going home fled from the sight and the sound of the Germans : the Paris froussards fled from the thought of the Germans. Honi soil qui mal y pense. Has any one the right 1 Horse meat isn't bad at all. Lots of Parisians never eat any other kind. They cannot afford to, or do not choose to afford to. The horse is a herbivorous animal, after all, and horror of eating him is purely imaginary and unreasonable. Just for fun I have brought up the question of horse-flesh over the famous hors d'ceuvres at the Brasserie Universelle, and have been amused to see my tete-a-tete shudder at the thought while she was consuming with gusto a certain delicious sausage — equine in origin! Beati ignor antes! 385 PARIS REBORN to pass judgment on the froussards? Perhaps not. We are free agents. When it is a question of the unwritten code, we must decide for ourselves, and let others decide for themselves. But we who did not despair of the Republic, and who remained quietly at home attending to our business and living our normal life have saved ourselves much expense and discomfort. And we do not have to explain to our friends why it was necessary at a certain par- ticular moment to leave Paris. The froussards may have come back too soon. For we cannot be sure as yet that the Germans will not make this week another determined effort to reach Paris. The question we are asking ourselves now is whether our friends who have made the jour- ney to the country and back again to Paris, will once more feel it necessary to pay a thousand francs for an automobile, or two hundred and fifty francs for a seat in a river boat to Rouen. The fortunes of war may change again, and we may once more hear the German cannon at the gates of Paris. It may even be that the German General Staff will decide to take a gambler's chance and stake all upon the capture of Paris. Is one wise in feeling that the Battle of the Marne has been de- cisive in relieving Paris from the German menace? It is a curious fact that the froussards seem to be most optimistic the moment the immediate cause of 386 THE FROUSSARDS COME HOME their fears is removed. The two million Parisians who stayed quietly at home and awaited the issue of the Battle of the Marne did not exult in that vic- tory. There was no great popular demonstration of joy in Paris. This is a fact that cannot be too strongly set forth. The work of defending the city was still pushed with feverish haste. Even now, two months later, every night we still see the search- lights sweeping the skies in their watch for aero- planes and Zeppelins. The "sowers of panic" are the ones who are now absolutely certain that all goes well. It is from the froussards coming home that we hear exclamations of delight and confident assurances that the Ger- mans have been crushed. This evening, at the club, a number of well-in^ formed and thoughtful men were discussing the new phase of "siege operations" which the war seems to have taken. One was maintaining that, even if the German offensive was definitely checked, an offen- sive on our part, at the present moment, would have little chance of success against the German lines. "Without conscription in England," he said, "I fear we shall not be able to drive the Germans out of France — much less recover Belgium." A Samson of a froussard had just turned from the billiard table. As he put up his cue, he caught the last sentence. 387 PARIS REBORN With a lordly wave of the hand, he pooh-poohed our fears. "You fellows are talking rot," he broke in. "Be- fore Easter we shall be in Berlin." The man whom he interrupted took off his glasses, and rubbed them with his handkerchief. Then he readjusted them, and gazed at the froussard. "Is that the way they feel at Bordeaux*?" he asked. 388 XLV THE CHRISTMAS MIDNIGHT MASS AT SAINT SULPICE December twenty- fifth. 1 RETURNED to Paris last night, hurrying across Europe for Christmas Eve with my fam- ily, after my first absence from home since the day that war broke out. During these past three weeks I have been in Ly- ons, Geneva, Lausanne, Berne, Zurich, Stuttgart, Berlin, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Buda-Pesth, and Innsbruck — a flying trip through the heart of the enemy's country. I came back with a heavy heart on Christmas Eve, for I realized now that the war would be long, and that the suffering of these past months is not to be compared with that through which Europe has to pass during the year 1915. My many trains took me through no railway station on the platform of which I did not see women in tears. Women in tears — that is the whole of this war epit- omized in three words. Travel-stained and weary, I left the war and its problems behind me when I entered the door of my home last night, and saw my children around their 389 PARIS REBORN Christmas tree. Three little tots for whom I can hope no greater blessing than that they grow up in the midst of a world that does not know, that does not experience, what the world knows and experi- ences to-day. As I look at them, that is my thought. But there it is, the war coming in again ! I do not leave it at the door, even on Christmas Eve, the fete of the Prince of Peace. Then come the dinner guests, the English mer- chant and his wife, who have been heavily hit by bills unpaid in Germany; the Modiste, whose hats are not selling this winter and whose January rent is a problem, for all her men-folk are at the war; the Sewing- Woman who would have been married in September had not her lover been killed in August in the retreat from Belgium; the two Russian girls, students at the Sorbonne, who have been cut off from home since the war began and are now trying to keep body and soul together on a franc a day by sewing at an ouvroir; the Greek Musician from Con- stantinople who fears that his father and brother may have been killed by the Turks — and so on! With each I greet comes the thought and shadow of THE WAR. But the frolic with the children, followed by as- sociation around the dinner-table, brings good cheer. And good cheer dispels gloom. Our party is not an unhappy one. 390 THE CHRISTMAS MIDNIGHT MASS It was after eleven when our guests began to go. The Girl and I did not urge them to stay longer. We knew what difficulty those who lived in Auteuil and Passy would have in finding a taxi and in persuading the chauffeur to take them away over there across the city. And then, we wanted to go to the Midnight Mass at St. Sulpice. We set up our first home in the dear old Rue Servandoni, under the shadow of St. Sulpice, and have never lost our affection for our old parish church. Midnight mass at St. Sulpice is to us as much an institution as our Christmas tree. When we had bid our last guest Godspeed, and had assured ourselves that three curly heads were peacefully resting on three little white pillows, we slipped out into the Boulevard du Montparnasse, and hurried through the Rue Vavin to the Luxem- bourg, quickening our steps almost to a run in the dark streets, for fear lest we be too late to get inside the church. St. Sulpice is one of the largest build- ings in the world, but is never large enough for the Christmas midnight mass. We were in time. The four strokes of half past eleven were just sounding as we entered the church. The seats were filled, and the aisles were filling. But we managed to push our way through the crowd to a certain spot that has precious associations for us, and is at the same time a vantage point to those 391 PARIS REBORN who know St. Sulpice. For we could see the high altar, the choir in the apse, and look down through the nave of faces turned in our direction up to the organ loft where Maitre Widor still sits on state occasions. The silence of the expectant thousands, at this moment if ever in their lives in a worshipful mood, was broken only by constant footfalls on the stone floors, and the occasional whispered "pardon" of one who tried to push his way, as we had done, from the doors towards the choir. A few minutes before twelve, the verger mounted the high altar to light those candles that have not yet been profaned by electric globes. Real wax and flickering light — how rare that now is. As the first stroke of midnight from the bell in the north tower reverberated through the church, the priest and acolytes came into the chancel. When the twelfth stroke announced the new day, Maitre Widor bent over the organ. It was Adam's Noel that he began to play. A tenor voice rose in the stillness. Minuit' chretien! C'est 1'heure solennelle Ou I'homme Dieu descendit jusqu'a nous, Pour effacer la tache originelle Et de son pere arreter le courroux. Le monde entier tresaille d'esperance A cette nuit qui lui donne un Sauveur. 392 THE CHRISTMAS MIDNIGHT MASS Peuple a genoux, attends ta deliverance, Noel, Noel, void le Redempteur. The priest had opened his missal, and the vast congregation was following him in the silent mass. A wonderful chorus, worthy inheritor of three cen- turies of glorious Sulpician tradition, repeated the last two lines of the verse. Then the soloist began again, accompanied by the soaring obligate of a violin. De notre foi que la lumiere ardente Nous guide tous au berceau de 1'enfant, Comme autrefois une etoile brillante Y conduisit les chefs de 1'Orient. Le Roi des rois, ne dans un humble creche. Puissants du jour, fiers de votre grandeur, A votre orgeuil — c'est de la qu'un dieu preche: Courbez vos fronts devant le Redempteur! The Girl had gripped my arm hard. All around were crying, and she was. I looked with eyes that seemed to see, and yet seemed not to see, out over the faces turned towards the altar. The third verse had started. The singer was pleading with us again to bow our heads with joy before the Christ Child who had come to bring peace. Never had I seen so few men at a Christmas mass. Aside from the white haired, most of the masculine worshipers were in uniform and wounded. How 393 PARIS REBORN many among those who had gathered here to hail the advent of peace on earth and good will among men had given their sons or their husbands or their fathers to France during these past five months! Only three days ago I stood on the Kartnerring in Vienna and watched the limousines purring softly up to the steps of the Opera House, and the gay and laughing men and women in evening dress coming out of the house of song and laughter. Only a week ago I sat in a cafe at Berlin and watched the mid- night riot of drinking men and their companions. Oh! Paris, Paris! Will they ever have cause to feel as you feel to-night1? Are there those in the world who may make suffering and not suffer*? Silence ! The music has stopped. A moment of stillness. Then the tinkling of the acolyte's bell at the high altar, followed by the tinkling of other bells in the dozen chapels of the apse and nave where other priests are celebrating silent masses. The elevation of the cup ! Then the triumphant chorus, bursting forth into Adeste Fideles. When the last line of the hymn of fifteen centuries of hallowed Christmas usage has been sung, the mass is finished. The communicants press towards the rail. We turn to go. Mockery, illusion, delusion — what means this ceremony in Paris to-night? A thousand who were here last Christmas Eve are 394 THE CHRISTMAS MIDNIGHT MASS dead : and another thousand are in the trenches only fifty miles away, shooting their fellow-men and be- ing shot by them. But these people have got some- thing from this midnight mass. I can feel that. I can feel it in the silence of the Girl at my side, in her tears, in her smile. We go out into the dark. As I button my over- coat, I see the Jesuit Father standing by a pillar of the great porch. We pass close by him to reach the steps. "Merry Christmas !" he said. "Merry Christmas !" responded the Girl. "But merry — why merry ?" I asked. "Happiness for the Christ Child," he answered. "A happiness that drowns all sorrow: for it trans- cends all sorrow, just as God's goodness transcends our weakness. Merry Christmas for you, for France, for the world!" I looked at him. His shoulders were thrown back, his fine face from forehead to beard was show- ing forth Christ in him, the Hope of Glory. What the Girl had received inside, I received now. "Merry Christmas !" I said. THE END 395 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles Thl. book I. DUE on Ih. la.t dal. .lamped b.low. NO PHONE RENEWALS 3 1158 01188 4110 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000117307 9